AN OASIS DWELLING THATCHED WITH PALM LEAVES IN COLORADO DESERT
This might pass for a cannibal's hut in the South Sea Islands
From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.
| 100 gallons, or less, | 25 cents per gallon. |
| Two-horse load, | 10 cents per gallon. |
| Four-horse load, | 8 cents per gallon. |
The well is a very deep one and the water was obtained by drilling. It requires a power-pump to raise the water to the surface, and the fuel to run the boiler and engine has to be hauled many miles across the desert sands, so, after all, the rates for water are not so exorbitant as they may seem at first glance.
Every year the great deserts of the West claim scores of victims, the most of whom die of thirst. Men go out into the arid plains, are not again heard from, and their fate remains, in many cases, a mystery to the end of time. Again, beside a bleaching skeleton is found a trinket or belonging which serves to identify the remains. Sometimes the identification comes long after death, as in the case of a Los Angeles prospector who years ago left that city with a companion to cross the desert.
The two men lost their way, and the prospector, leaving his companion with the burros at the foot of an eminence, climbed to the top to take a survey of the country and try to get his bearings. After waiting an hour or more for him to return, his comrade began searching for him, and after several hours of vain seeking he resumed the journey alone and eventually reached his destination in safety. Twenty years later some prospectors found human bones upon the desert and beside them a hunting-knife and a watch which had belonged to the long-lost prospector. He had died within two miles of good water.
Here and there in the solitudes of these great Saharas may be seen rude crosses, or stones heaped into mounds, to mark the spot where, in horrible torture, some human life went out. And, strange as it may seem, these graves are more plentiful in the vicinity of the oases than elsewhere. To drink heavily after several hours of abstinence is almost certain death. Many a poor fellow has struggled on through hours of extreme torture, buoyed up by the thoughts of the refreshing draught awaiting him, only to die in agony from drinking too deeply of the precious potion.