Not long ago a respectable citizen of a little California town had occasion to cross the desert at a point where water-holes were few and far apart. He depended upon obtaining water at a certain ranch, established at one of the oases on his route, and when he arrived there he and his guide and burros were in sad condition, having been several hours without water. He gave his guide a five-dollar gold-piece and told him to see the rancher and purchase the water necessary to carry them to the next watering-place. It happened that the rancher's well was in danger of going dry, and he declined the money, refusing to part with any water. Pleadings were unavailing, and the guide returned to his employer and reported his inability to make a deal. Then the staid citizen arose in his wrath and, with a ten-dollar gold-piece in one hand and a revolver in the other, he sought the rancher. "There is ten dollars for the water, if you will sell it," he said; "and if not, I will send you to Hades and take it, anyway! Now which will it be?" There was but one reply to an argument of that kind; the rancher sulkily accepted the money, the brackish water was drawn from the well, and the journey was soon resumed. As a result of this transaction, however, the rancher was obliged to take a forty-mile journey over the desert and back, to replenish his water-supply from another well. John F. McPherson, of Los Angeles, manager of the Nevada Land Office, left Los Angeles, in August, 1900, to traverse the Great Mojave Desert, on his way to look over the lands in the Parumph Valley, in Nevada. His experience, which was by no means uncommon, is best related by himself. "I left Los Angeles by team," he says, "for the purpose of retracing the Government surveys and making field notes. I had with me two companions, one Samuel Baker and a young man from the East. We proceeded over the foothills to Cajon Pass, thence to Victor, out on the desert. It was in the burning days of a fierce, dry summer. The earth was fervid and the air quivered with the intense heat of the sun which poured its burning rays from a cloudless sky. Bad luck accompanied us from the very start. At Pomona, thirty miles from Los Angeles, we lost a horse and had to purchase another. At Daggett, out in the desert, which place we reached the second day of our desert travel, we found the thermometer registering 128 degrees in the shade. We passed through Daggett and made camp, ten miles farther on, at dark. [Illustration: AN OASIS IN THE COLORADO DESERT From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]