APPENDIX A 

 HINTS ON DESERT TRAVELLING 



(Extracts from Water-Supply Paper 224 of the United 

 States Geological Survey, entitled "Some Desert Water- 

 ing-Places in Southeastern California and Southwestern 

 Nevada," by Walter C. Mendenhall; reprinted here by 

 kind permission of the Survey.) 



[Author's Note: Some of the suggestions that follow may carry 

 less weight now than when they were compiled (1909), through 

 the recent improvement of the main desert roads, with, as conse- 

 quences, the advent of the automobile and an increased amount 

 of travel, and through the beginning that has lately been made at 

 bettering water facilities and installing direction-posts. Never- 

 theless, the characteristics of the desert remain, prudence is never 

 obsolete, and these hints may prove to well repay some traveller's 

 attention.) 



Where teams are used, animals accustomed to the desert 

 should be procured, if possible, for horses or mules that 

 are unused to desert conditions fret on the sandy roads 

 and rapidly weaken from drinking the saline waters. 

 They are also in danger of pneumonia from the cold of 

 winter nights and the wide extremes of temperature. 

 During winter journeys blankets should be provided to 

 protect the animals at night. 



Travel in the desert far from the railroads and from 

 food-supplies is, of course, more expensive than in other 

 regions. A party leaving a supply station to go one hun- 

 dred miles or more into an uninhabited part of the desert 

 must take along everything needed, even to the most 

 minute detail. This means that if the trip is to last for two 

 weeks, enough hay and grain for each animal and enough 

 provisions to last each man that length of time must be 



