of
distance. And the sun was setting in a blaze of gold. From the rim I
took a last lingering look and did not marvel that I loved this
wonderland of Arizona.

[Illustration: BURROS PACKED FOR THE TRAIL]

[Illustration: THE DEADLY CHOLLA, MOST POISONOUS AND PAIN INFLICTING OF
THE CACTUS]

CHAPTER V

DEATH VALLEY

Of the five hundred and fifty-seven thousand square miles of desert-land
in the southwest Death Valley is the lowest below sea level, the most
arid and desolate. It derives its felicitous name from the earliest days
of the gold strike in California, when a caravan of Mormons, numbering
about seventy, struck out from Salt Lake, to cross the Mojave Desert and
make a short cut to the gold fields. All but two of these prospectors
perished in the deep, iron-walled, ghastly sink-holes, which from that
time became known as Death Valley.

The survivors of this fatal expedition brought news to the world that
the sombre valley of death was a treasure mine of minerals; and since
then hundreds of prospectors and wanderers have lost their lives there.
To seek gold and to live in the lonely waste places of the earth have
been and ever will be driving passions of men.

My companion on this trip was a Norwegian named Nielsen. On most of my
trips to lonely and wild places I have been fortunate as to comrades or
guides. The circumstances of my meeting Nielsen were so singular that I
think they will serve as an interesting introduction. Some years ago I
received a letter, brief, clear and well-written, in which the writer
stated that he had been a wanderer over the world, a sailor before the
mast, and was now a prospector for gold. He had taken four trips alone
down into the desert of Sonora, and in many other places of the
southwest, and knew the prospecting game. Somewhere he had run across my
story _Desert Gold_ in which I told about a lost gold mine. And the
point of his letter was that if I could give him some idea as to where
the lost gold mine was located he would go find it and give me half. His
name was Sievert Nielsen. I wrote him that to my regret the lost gold
mine existed only in my imagination, but if he would come to Avalon to
see me perhaps we might both profit by such a meeting. To my surprise he
came. He was a man of about thirty-five, of magnificent physique,
weighing about one hundred and ninety, and he was so enormously broad
across the shoulders that he did not look his five feet ten. He had