154 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



and rifle, for two weeks' work on their claims. Natu- 

 rally, summer is not the season chosen, water then 

 being scantiest and heat most trying, so I saw little 

 of these pilgrims of hope: but in winter and spring 

 there will be many such parties, ones, twos, and 

 threes, creeping about this vast territory wherever 

 man, horse, or burro may go (automobile must now 

 be added, for the automobilist's maxim is that man, 

 with an auto, can go where man has gone before.) 



After six hours' travel, a dot in the distance that I 

 had been speculating upon for an hour past began 

 to take the shape that I hoped it would — an odd 

 shape to find in this wilderness, viz. : that of a wind- 

 mill of the modern iron type. It marked Lyon's 

 Well, which is a watering station for stock, though 

 the traveller may see no sign of cattle for days to- 

 gether. On nearer approach there appeared a few 

 scraps of adobe wall, all that remains of the first 

 settlement of Virginia Dale, Of all materials for 

 building used by civilized man, adobe is the one 

 soonest effaced. Once the roof is gone the rest goes 

 quickly "back to the ground from whence it 

 sprung." Fifty years after its palmy days I could 

 barely find shelter from the wind in what was left of 

 Virginia Dale. The historian of a mining camp must 

 be early on the scene if he is to find anything more 

 than the ground on which it stood. 



The pump was out of commission, but I man- 

 aged with rope and bucket to supply Kaweah's 

 needs. A strong wind had begun to blow, adding 

 discomfort to tedium, as we turned southward up 

 a rocky slope toward a low divide. My next land- 



