of same date; Bancroft's History
of Colorado; U.S. House Documents, 1879-1880 (Indian Commission).]

CHAPTER X.

THE BLAZING-EYE MINE.

In Eastern California there lies a strip of country less than a hundred
miles in length and thirty miles in width--the Gehenna of America--a
basin so defiled that the abomination of the Israelites, the Valley of
Hinnom, was a paradise; Tophet, where the sacrifices of children to
Moloch were made by this Biblical tribe of Hebrews, was at least
habitable. Death Valley lies two hundred and fifty feet lower than the
tide water of the Pacific Ocean. Upon this strip of land grows no
verdure, and within its confines exists no life save the scorpion, the
centipede, the tarantula, the hideous gila monster and rattlesnakes, all
more deadly poisonous than sisters and brothers of the same family found
elsewhere, each species a continual menace to the others in the never
ending battle for life--vindictive conquerors at last being vanquished
by more malignant foes.

The desert is one mass of burning, blighting alkali sand. The heat is
beyond human endurance, and what few pools of water may be found by
digging deep into the earth are so pregnant with disease-breeding,
loathsome germs, that death is but hastened to the poor victim of thirst
who attempts to assuage his sufferings by drinking the polluted reward
of frenzied labor.

At one time the government established an observation station within the
borders of this waste to give scientifically to the world an accurate
account of the perils which await the prospector venturesome enough to
visit this living ossuary--the realm of the dead and habitat of the
uncanny. Records show that the government representative found the heat
so burdensome that clothing was dispensed with, and in nature's
primitive garb the lonely vigils were passed until the station was
abandoned.

Years before, a prospector braved the perils of the desert and returned
more dead than alive, but with golden sand and golden nuggets and tales
of a mine whose splendor out-dazzled the wildest dreams. This prospector
called the mine after himself, "Pegleg." He obtaining his sobriquet from
the fact that one of his legs was a wooden peg. He organized a party and
they entered the valley, never to return. Other parties were formed and
attempted a rescue, only to leave their bones to bleach as monuments of
man's distorted and perverse cupidity.

The government sent a detachment