[CHAPTER X]
DESERT BORAX MINES
In the most desolate, dangerous, and terrifying locality in the United States, if not in the whole world, lie the largest known deposits of borax in the universe. Death Valley is the repository of more mineral wealth than has ever been brought out of the Klondike, but Death stands guard over the hoards of gold, silver, copper, salt, niter, borax, and precious stones known to abound there.
Every year prospectors brave the terrors of the desert and enter the dread portals of the gateway to the valley. This gateway is through a range of mountains to which have been given the most appropriate name of Funeral Mountains. Every year new tragedies are enacted in the valley and new graves are made under the shadow of these mountains, or else the victims, finding no grave, lie upon the burning sands and stare with sightless eyes at the mountains which bound the valley.
A TRACTION ENGINE HAULING BORAX FROM DEATH VALLEY
From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.