A moment later I was headed into a silence broken only by the whip of sage against the car. Ahead was the glimmer of a dry lake and in the distance a great mass of jumbled mountains that notched the pale skies. Beyond—what? I never dreamed then that for twenty-five years I would be poking around in those deceiving hills. Chapter II What Caused Death Valley? When you travel through the desolation of Death Valley along the Funeral Range, you may find it difficult to believe that several thousand feet above the top of your car was once a cool, inviting land with rivers and forests and lakes, and that hundreds of feet below you are the dry beds of seas that washed its shores. Scientists assert that all life—both animal and vegetable began in these buried seas—probably two and one-half billion years ago. It is certain that no life could have existed on the thin crust of earth covered as it was with deadly gases. Therefore, your remotest ancestors must have been sea creatures until they crawled out or were washed ashore in one of Nature’s convulsions to become land dwellers. Since sea water contains more gold than has ever been found on the earth, it may be said that man on his way up from the lowest form of life was born in a solution of gold. That he survived, is due to two urges—the sex urge and the urge for food. Without either all life would cease. Note. The author’s book, _Life’s Grand Stairway_ soon to be published, contains a fast moving, factual story of man and his eternal quest for gold from the beginning of recorded time. Camping one night at Mesquite Spring, I heard a prospector cursing his burro. It wasn’t a casual cursing, but a classic revelation of one who knew burros—the soul of them, from inquisitive eyes to deadly heels. A moment later he was feeding lumps of sugar to the beast and the feud ended on a pleasant note. We were sitting around the camp fire later when the prospector showed me a piece of quartz that glittered at twenty feet. “Do you have much?” I asked. “I’ve got more than Carter had oats, and I’m pulling out at daylight. Me and Thieving Jack.” “I suppose,” I said aimlessly, “you’ll retire to a life of luxury; have a palace, a housekeeper, and a French chef.” “Nope. Chinaman cook. Friend of mine struck it rich. He had a female cook. After that he couldn’t call his soul his own. Me? First money I spend goes for pie. Never had my fill of pie. Next—” He paused and looked affectionately at Thieving Jack. “I’m going to buy a ranch over at Lone Pine with a stream running smack through the middle. Snow water. I aim to build a fence head high all around it and pension that burro off. As for me—no mansion. Just a cottage with a screen porch all around. I’m sick of horseflies and mosquitoes.” He was off at sunrise and my thought was that God went with him and Thieving Jack.