Inquiry brought forth the information that a similar inundation had taken place in 1849. At that time, however, the waters subsided before so large a lake had been formed.
It was these inundations which gave birth to the idea of converting a part of the waters of the Colorado into an irrigating canal for the purpose of reclaiming the lands of the valley.
[CHAPTER XIII]
DEATH VALLEY
Of the 157,000 square miles of territory which comprise the State of California, 35,000 square miles are desert. Of this area more than two thousand square miles lie below the level of the sea. The lowest point in all this submarine field is found in Death Valley, the most terrifying and forbidding region in the world.
Death Valley has been rightly named. It was christened with blood and has ever lived up to its title. Sixty-eight out of the seventy Mormon emigrants who wandered into that dread region, in 1849, gave their lives to the christening. The story of their terrible death from tortures of thirst and agonies of heat is too horrible to print. They came into a nameless region and their bodies were there consigned to unmarked graves. There lie to-day the remains of all that party save two. These two, when they came away, left behind them a region with a name—Death Valley.
