No one without experience in travelling over deserts in the summer season can realize the hardships attending travel in the region of Death Valley nor the sombre sameness of the arid stretches of sand. When the sun has set and the full moon rising makes the silhouettes of the mountains look darker, a vague, indescribable sensation comes over one--an awe-inspiring feeling of insignificance and helplessness amidst scenes of majestic desolation. If religiously inclined, one is prone to utter the words of the wandering Arab of the Sahara, "Nothing exists here but Allah! _Allah hu Akbar!_--God is greater than all his created witnesses." In summer, the air being almost entirely destitute of moisture, evaporation is exceedingly rapid, and so hot is the sun at this season that metal objects lying out-of-doors burn the hand if touched. Many years ago valuable borax deposits were discovered in the Death Valley and thousands of tons of borax have been freighted out by huge wagons drawn by mules; indeed, "twenty-mule-team borax" has become almost a household term. Borax is still mined here, but not so extensively as formerly, more accessible borax deposits having been found in Nevada and elsewhere--and the twenty-mule team is now a motor-truck! Nearly one-third of all of the borax of the world comes from the deserts of California and Nevada. When borax was first discovered in California the wholesale price in New York was about fifty cents a pound; now it is about six cents. The various applications of borax to industrial and domestic uses have kept pace with its enormous production during the last twenty-five years, until now it is used for more than fifty different purposes. The meat-packers of the United States alone use several million pounds as a preservative. It is also used with excellent results as an antiseptic in dressing wounds and sores. Furnace Creek enters the valley on the eastern side of Death Valley, but its waters soon sink out of sight. The creek is used to irrigate a tract of alfalfa, a small garden, and a few trees; and the small ranch, a veritable oasis in a desert, is rightly called Greenland. A few men are kept employed here by the borax company. Now and then, however, the whole crowd, tiring of the extreme heat, desert in a body. This region is now robbed of some of its terrors by the completion of the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, which touches Death Valley at the old Amargosa Borax Works. CHAPTER VI THE MINERAL WEALTH OF THE ANDES At this period of the world's progress, when so many marvellous inventions are taking place, one can scarcely realize the intense interest that was awakened by the first discoveries made in the New World. So great was the excitement that the most improbable stories were readily believed.