where the borax was roasted in
huge round revolving furnaces--I found that intolerable. When I got out
into the cool clean desert air I felt an immeasurable relief. And that
relief made me thoughtful of the lives of men who labored, who were
chained by necessity, by duty or habit, or by love, to the hard tasks of
the world. It did not seem fair. These laborers of the borax mines and
mills, like the stokers of ships, and coal-diggers, and blast-furnace
hands--like thousands and millions of men, killed themselves outright or
impaired their strength, and when they were gone or rendered useless
others were found to take their places. Whenever I come in contact with
some phase of this problem of life I take the meaning or the lesson of
it to myself. And as the years go by my respect and reverence and
wonder increase for these men of elemental lives, these horny-handed
toilers with physical things, these uncomplaining users of brawn and
bone, these giants who breast the elements, who till the earth and
handle iron, who fight the natural forces with their bodies.

That day about noon I looked back down the long gravel and greasewood
slope which we had ascended and I saw the borax-mill now only a smoky
blot on the desert floor. When we reached the pass between the Black
Mountains and the Funeral Mountains we left the road, and were soon lost
to the works of man. How strange a gladness, a relief! Something dropped
away from me. I felt the same subtle change in Nielsen. For one thing he
stopped talking, except an occasional word to the mules.

The blunt end of the Funeral Range was as remarkable as its name. It
sheered up very high, a saw-toothed range with colored strata tilted at
an angle of forty-five degrees. Zigzag veins of black and red and
yellow, rather dull, ran through the great drab-gray mass. This end of
the range, an iron mountain, frowned down upon us with hard and
formidable aspect. The peak was draped in streaky veils of rain from
low-dropping clouds that appeared to have lodged there. All below lay
clear and cold in the sunlight.

[Illustration: THE COLORED CALICO MOUNTAINS]

[Illustration: DOWN THE LONG WINDING WASH TO DEATH VALLEY]

Our direction lay to the westward, and at that altitude, about three
thousand feet, how pleasant to face the sun! For the wind was cold. The
narrow shallow wash leading down from the pass deepened, widened, almost
imperceptibly at first, and then gradually until its proportions