feet
below them walled in by the mountains on both sides, one of the
mothers lifted her arm in a gesture of farewell.

"Good-bye, Death Valley!" she cried.

That is the way the place was named.

They turned their backs on it and descended the long western slope.
The dog, which they had taken with them all this distance, limped
along behind the little train. The mule went on before. And in Los
Angeles, where they joined the other survivors of the company weeks
later and told the people of the pueblo of their sufferings, they
called the sink Death Valley when they spoke of it.

Later, when they had gone into the north--for all of them pressed on
as soon as they were able to travel again--they separated, seeking
their fortunes in the mines. Years passed and occasionally some of
them met again. At such times, or when they told others of the pitfall
into which they descended striving toward the snow peak, they always
used the name Death Valley. And so it has come down to us to-day.

JOAQUIN MURIETA

In the days of '49 when Murphy's Diggings was as lively a little
placer camp as one could find in a long ride through the red
foot-hills of the Sierras, a young Mexican monte-dealer disappeared.
He was a handsome fellow, lighter of complexion than most of his
countrymen, owned a sunny smile and spoke English fluently, all of
which things made him a favorite among the American customers and
consequently an asset to the house. So when dusk came and the booted
miners began drifting into the long canvas-roofed hall, the proprietor
scanned the crowd for him with some anxiety.

But the proprietor might as well have saved himself the trouble of
that search; the monte-dealer had forsaken his table for a different
sort of job.

Just at this time he was on the hill beyond the upper end of the camp
kneeling beside an open grave; and in his clasped hands, uplifted high
above his head, he held a naked bowie-knife. Some light still lingered
here among the stiff-branched digger-pines, a faint reflection of the
sunset far beyond the flat lands of the San Joaquin valley. It shone
upon his face revealing a multitude of lines, so deeply scored, so
terrible in their proclamation of deadly hate, that the sight of them
would have startled the most case-hardened member of the crowds down
there where the candles were twinkling in the humming camp.

The waning light which sifted through the long plumed tassels of the
digger-pines sho