ON THE GREAT SANDY DESERT. 169 



eratus, and so in fact was a good portion of the basin, which 

 was of a dead level. It was about sundown when we reached 

 the opposite range of mountains, which, in. spite of the dis- 

 tance, had been visible all day, as the same clear atmosphere 

 which covers the plains is found here. After a tedious jour- 

 ney of thirty miles we encamped at midnight on the summit 

 of a ridge which was totally destitute of water, and our only 

 fuel was the detestable yucca, which gave forth such a sicken- 

 ing odor as to almost preclude our using it. 



Descending this mountain and crossing a broad waste of 

 yielding sand, we arrived in the afternoon of the 12th at the 

 "Kingston Springs" — the western terminus of the fifty mile 

 jornado on which we had been journeying since the morning 

 of the previous day. Here several springs of warm water, 

 strongly tinctured with sulphur, gush from the summit of a 

 mound, rising about four feet above the plain. The scenery 

 here is obstructed on all sides but one by groups of buttes, 

 which rise above the plain with rocky, shattered fronts. These 

 regions are so destitute of anything like ordinary fuel, that 

 had we not brought some along in our wagons we would have 

 eaten an uncooked dinner. 



At the foot of one of the high, rocky mounds w^e found a 

 portion of the skeleton of a poor wretch, who had paid the 

 forfeit of his life in trying to accomplish the feat of crossing 

 the Great Desert alone. Our Mormon friends knew the history 

 of him whose only remains were the whitened bones lying 

 around us. He was a man young in years but of intelli- 

 gence, who from some cause became deranged. In one of his 

 fits of madness he mounted his horse, and leaving San Ber- 

 nardino, crossed the Sierra, and alone and unprotected struck 

 out into the bosom of the Great Desert. The next that was 

 heard of him was when a party of travelers found at the 

 Kingston Springs his body pierced with arrows by the side 

 of the fountain. The remains had been buried, but those 

 11 



