The Great Desert

Desert has been conquered. Witness Great American Desert of forty-niners, hunger and thirst and an awful silence, as a survivor described crossing that named Death Valley. Then was passage perilous by northern or southern routes. The desert through which we are passing is strewn with dead cattle, mules, and horses. I counted in a distance of fifteen miles 350 dead horses, 280 oxen, and 120 mules; and hundreds of others are left behind unable to keep up-thus a pioneer on route west of Humboldt Sink. Broken wagons, dead, shrivelled-up cattle, horses and mules as well, lay baking in sun, around dried up wells that had been opened, in hopes of getting water. Not a blade of grass or green thing of any kind relieved monotony of parched, ash-colored earth, and most melancholy scene presented itself that I had seen since I left Rio Grande-thus John W. Audubon on Colorado desert route.' Today railroad and automobile have entirely transformed travel in arid West. increased use of latter means of transportation in particular has led to taming of wilderness. Individuals and states have contributed to this end, and United States Geological Survey has well in hand a systematic program for making desert safe and accessible by mapping, marking, and improving its watering places. federal work was begun in 1917 with a survey in that and succeeding year of the driest, hottest, and least explored part of desert region, comprising 6o,ooo square miles in southeastern California and southwestern Arizona. Signs directing travelers to water were erected at I67 localities in former state and at 138 in latter. Danger is now largely a matter of negligence.2 Similar conquests are in progress in Old World. From time immemorial travel between Syria and Mesopotamia sought circuitous route by fertile crescent in preference to direct roads across desert, used chiefly by caravans carrying luxury articles. Referring to waterless stretch of fifty miles on way to Palmyra, Huntington observes that while previous to opening of railroad from Damascus to Aleppo caravans containing an annual total of from a thousand to fifteen

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Desert (philosophy · Geography · Humanities · Political science · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Studies in Science · History · Law · Mediterranean and Iberian flora and fauna

• Shifting Sands

  Open Access•Mike Heffernan•Engineering Earth•2011

  Add to list