1885.] on Sunlight and the Earth's Atmosphere. 275 



and mist, so that the desired conditions, if met at all, could only be 

 found on the other side of the continent in Southern California, where 

 the summits of the Sierra Nevadas rise precipitously out of the dry 

 air of the great wastes in lonely peaks, which look eastward down 

 from a height of nearly 15,000 feet upon the desert lands. 



This remote region was, at the time I speak of, almost unexplored, 

 and its highest peak, Mount Whitney, had been but once or twice 

 asceaded, but was represented to be all we desired could we onco 

 climb it. As there was great doubt whether our apparatus, weighing 

 several thousand pounds, could possibly be taken to the top, and we had 

 to travel 3000 miles even to get where the chief difficulties would 

 begin, and make a desert journey of 150 miles after leaving the cars, 

 it may be asked why we committed ourselves to such an immense 

 journey to face such unknown risks of failure. The answer must be 

 that mountains of easy ascent and 15,000 feet high are not to be found 

 at our doors, and that these risks were involved in the nature of our 

 novel experiment, so that we started out from no love of mere adven- 

 ture, but from necessity, much into the unknown. The liberality of 

 a citizen of Pittsburgh, to whose encouragement the enterprise was 

 due, had furnished the costly and delicate apparatus for the exj)edition, 

 and that of the trans-continental railroads, enabled us to take this 

 precious freight along in a private car, which carried a kitchen, a 

 steward, a cook, and an ample larder besides. 



In this we crossed the entire continent from ocean to ocean, stopped 

 at San Francisco for the military escort, went 300 miles south so as 

 to get below the mountains, and then turned eastward again on to 

 the desert, with the Sierras to the north of us, after a journey which 

 would have been unalloyed pleasure except for the anticipation of 

 what was coming as soon as we left our car. I do not indeed know 

 that one feels the triumphs of civilisation over the opposing forces of 

 Nature anywhere more than by the sharp contrasts which the marvel- 

 lous luxury of recent railroad accommodation gives to the life of the 

 desert. When one is in the centre of one of the great barren regions 

 of the globe, and, after looking out from the windows of the flying 

 train on its scorched wastes for lonely leagues of habitless desolation, 

 turns to his well-furnished dinner-table, and the fruit and ices of his 

 dessert, he need not envy the heroes of Oriental story, who were 

 carried across dreadful solitudes in a single night on the backs of 

 flying genii. Ours brought us over 3000 miles to the Mojave Desert. 

 It was growing hotter and hotter when the train stopped in the midst 

 of vast sand wastes a little after midnight. Eoused from our sleep, 

 we stepped on to the brown sand, and saw our luxurious car roll away 

 in the distance, experiencing a transition from the conditions of civi- 

 lisation to those almost of barbarism, as sharp as could well be imagined. 

 We commenced our slow toil northward with a thermometer at 110^ 

 in the shade, if any shade there be in the shadeless desert, which 

 seemed to be chiefly inhabited by rattlesnakes of an ashen-grey colour, 

 and a peculiarly venomous bite. There is no water save at the rarest 



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