s character. Now it is the Mecca of the gold-seeker.

These mines have already made many a poor man wealthy and many a wealthy
man a millionaire. Each hillock, ledge, or ravine holds a possible
fortune, and no hardship and peril is too great for the prospector lured
by the hope of a rich find. The prosperous desert mining town, first
built of canvas and rough lumber, is soon replaced by a better class of
buildings, and water is brought through long miles of pipe from the
nearest available source. Anon, electric-lighting and other modern
conveniences are added, thereby making life more tolerable in a fierce
climate of heat and cold, of fiercer winds and blinding dust.

Not only is gold found in these desert wastes, but borax, nitre,
sulphur, silver, salt, soda, opals, garnets, turquoises, onyx, and
marble form a part of its resources. Rich gold mines have built the
towns of Randsburg and Johannesburg in the midst of the Mohave desert,
while finds of rich ore made elsewhere are of frequent occurrence. It is
thought that in the near future sufficient nitre can be obtained from
the deserts of California and Nevada to render the United States
independent of Chile, from whose desert, Atacama, the world's chief
supply of this mineral is now obtained.

Perhaps there is no part of the United States more healthy and at the
same time more deadly than the southeastern part of California, embraced
in those indefinite areas called the Mohave and Colorado deserts. That
life and death should lay claim to the same regions with equal strength
seems somewhat of a riddle, but a careful investigation of the
conditions will make good the claims of both. Here are regions rivalling
the Sahara in heat, lack of water, and barrenness, and in many parts as
difficult to traverse; regions full of surprises in deceptive mirages,
peculiar vegetation, strange animal life, occasional cloud-bursts, purity
and exhilarating effects of atmosphere, charm of ever-changing colors
reflected from the mountains, wealth of floral display in early spring,
and marvellous fertility of soil when touched by the magic wand of
water. All these and a certain weirdness of beauty difficult to define
give these great wastes a peculiar attraction of their own which only
those who have spent much time there can understand and appreciate.

For the dread white plague in its early stages there is no medicine and
no other climate that can equal the pure, healing atmosphere of th