These mines have already made many a poor man wealthy and many a wealthy man a millionaire. Each hillock, ledge, or ravine holds a possible fortune, and no hardship and peril is too great for the prospector lured by the hope of a rich find. The prosperous desert mining town, first built of canvas and rough lumber, is soon replaced by a better class of buildings, and water is brought through long miles of pipe from the nearest available source. Anon, electric-lighting and other modern conveniences are added, thereby making life more tolerable in a fierce climate of heat and cold, of fiercer winds and blinding dust. Not only is gold found in these desert wastes, but borax, nitre, sulphur, silver, salt, soda, opals, garnets, turquoises, onyx, and marble form a part of its resources. Rich gold mines have built the towns of Randsburg and Johannesburg in the midst of the Mohave desert, while finds of rich ore made elsewhere are of frequent occurrence. It is thought that in the near future sufficient nitre can be obtained from the deserts of California and Nevada to render the United States independent of Chile, from whose desert, Atacama, the world's chief supply of this mineral is now obtained. Perhaps there is no part of the United States more healthy and at the same time more deadly than the southeastern part of California, embraced in those indefinite areas called the Mohave and Colorado deserts. That life and death should lay claim to the same regions with equal strength seems somewhat of a riddle, but a careful investigation of the conditions will make good the claims of both. Here are regions rivalling the Sahara in heat, lack of water, and barrenness, and in many parts as difficult to traverse; regions full of surprises in deceptive mirages, peculiar vegetation, strange animal life, occasional cloud-bursts, purity and exhilarating effects of atmosphere, charm of ever-changing colors reflected from the mountains, wealth of floral display in early spring, and marvellous fertility of soil when touched by the magic wand of water. All these and a certain weirdness of beauty difficult to define give these great wastes a peculiar attraction of their own which only those who have spent much time there can understand and appreciate. For the dread white plague in its early stages there is no medicine and no other climate that can equal the pure, healing atmosphere of these deserts. A new lease of life may be gained by the nerve-racked man or woman who will lay aside all home worries and spend a few months at some congenial home on one or another of these deserts. [Illustration: Gila monsters] Among the animal life found on the desert are the wildcat, coyote, rabbit, deer, rat, tortoise, scorpion, centipede, tarantula, Gila monster, chuck-walla, desert rattlesnake, side-winder, humming-bird, eagle, quail, and road-runner. Wild horses and wild donkeys, or "burros," frequent these great wastes, cropping the vegetation that grows on the oases.