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Annual Reports of Academy of 
burro, which had bogged down to its belly and perished in an 
upright position, the mummied corpse a grim warning of the relent¬ 
less grip of the mud of a playa sink. 
Huddled at the foot of the Panamint Range, just across the mud 
flat, and on the road which was at one time the stage road from 
Mojave to the now deserted mining towns of Harrisburg and 
Skidoo, stand the disintegrating remains of Ballarat, once a 
flourishing mining center and distributing point. Now its former 
prestige a memory, all of its permanent inhabitants gone, and but a 
few transient ones left, Ballarat is another of those pathetic relics 
of the days when gold was the great lure to the grub-stakers of 
thirty years ago. Like the old-time prospector Ballarat is passing, 
but its well of good water is a splendid asset even to-day. 
North from Ballarat we travelled along the east side of Panamint 
Valley to the mouth of Wild Rose Canyon, which we had planned 
to ascend as far as we could drive our powerful machine. The 
mouth of Wild Rose Canyon is entered only after traversing several 
miles of very bad “wash,” largely broken rocks, and close under-cut 
banks of consolidated clays and gravels a hundred feet or so high. 
Travelling in such places is always bad, differing only in degree, 
always in danger of broken springs, axles, or engine damage, on 
account of the roughness of the so-called road and irregularity of 
the strain. In addition, during the summer period of rains the 
bed of a wash is the natural drainage of storm water which may 
fall miles away, and these channels become roaring torrents almost 
without warning. 
At three thousand six hundred feet in Wild Rose Canyon is 
Wild Rose Spring, a trickle of delicious water which replenished all 
our water cans, and for many years had served prospectors and the 
Skidoo stage with their necessary supply. Quite a tangle of vege¬ 
tation marks the course of this little rill down the canyon, until 
the thirsty earth takes back its own. At five thousand feet the 
canyon broadened out into a bowl-like enlargement some miles 
across, its floor seamed with washes and low ridges, the way usually 
being up one of the former. The first junipers and pinyons were 
encountered at about six thousand feet, and then the narrowing 
canyon and the nearness of the main ridge ahead told us we were 
approaching our destination. At nearly seven thousand feet, like 
gigantic stone beehives, stand the old charcoal kilns, used in days 
