were
striking. It was a gully where the gravel washed down during rains, and
where a scant vegetation, greasewood, and few low cacti and scrubby sage
struggled for existence. Not a bird or lizard or living creature in
sight! The trail was getting lonely. From time to time I looked back,
because as we could not see far ahead all the superb scene spread and
towered behind us. By and bye our wash grew to be a wide canyon, winding
away from under the massive, impondering wall of the Funeral Range. The
high side of this magnificent and impressive line of mountains faced
west--a succession of unscalable slopes of bare ragged rock, jagged and
jutted, dark drab, rusty iron, with gray and oblique strata running
through them far as eye could see. Clouds soared around the peaks.
Shadows sailed along the slopes.

[Illustration: DESOLATION AND DECAY. LOOKING DOWN OVER THE DENUDED
RIDGES TO THE STARK VALLEY OF DEATH]

Walking in loose gravel was as hard as trudging along in sand. After
about fifteen miles I began to have leaden feet. I did not mind hard
work, but I wanted to avoid over-exertion. When I am extremely wearied
my feelings are liable to be colored somewhat by depression or
melancholy. Then it always bothered me to get tired while Nielsen kept
on with his wonderful stride.

"Say, Nielsen, do you take me for a Yaqui?" I complained. "Slow up a
little."

Then he obliged me, and to cheer me up he told me about a little
tramping experience he had in Baja California. Somewhere on the east
slope of the Sierra Madre his burros strayed or were killed by
mountain-lions, and he found it imperative to strike at once for the
nearest ranch below the border, a distance of one hundred and fifty
miles. He could carry only so much of his outfit, and as some of it was
valuable to him he discarded all his food except a few biscuits, and a
canteen of water. Resting only a few hours, without sleep at all, he
walked the hundred and fifty miles in three days and nights. I believed
that Nielsen, by telling me such incidents of his own wild experience,
inspired me to more endurance than I knew I possessed.

As we traveled on down the canyon its dimensions continued to grow. It
finally turned to the left, and opened out wide into a valley running
west. A low range of hills faced us, rising in a long sweeping slant of
earth, like the incline of a glacier, to rounded spurs. Half way up this
slope, where the brown earth lightened there showed an