occupy his time, I have my investigations to carry on and a great deal of laboratory work, though I am not practising medicine regularly. Anyway, we didn’t want to go into the opal-mining game. But, as I said, the undiscovered valley enticed us, and we wanted to know all about it.

“The opal claims are on the desert in what is called the Shinbone Country. It is very difficult to get to them, and the soft, deep sand makes automobiles a failure. One must use horses and pack burros, and at best the water supply is dangerously short. However, the undiscovered valley is something like thirty miles beyond the desert, in the mountains, at an elevation of perhaps eight thousand feet.

“From the description they gave us, those who know of its existence say that it is about thirteen miles long by seven or eight miles in width. It is surrounded by high peaks upon which the snow lies for almost the entire year. These peaks are said to be straight up[20] and down, to use Morley’s phrase, and heavily timbered up to the snow-line. The valley is therefore like the crater of an extinct volcano, and many claim that it is just that. To reach the timbered section, one must cross miles and miles of country covered with the densest chaparral. He must either cut his way through it with a knife and an ax or crawl on all fours. This stretch is waterless, and exposed to the sunny side of steep mountains, where the heat beats down unmercifully.

[20]

“But assuming that a fellow gets through this chaparral country, he has yet to scale those grim peaks which Morley calls straight up and down. And if he reaches the summit, he then will be obliged to get down into the valley, perhaps several thousand feet in depth.

“The valley was discovered some years ago by a forest ranger. He had climbed to a high peak about sixteen miles distant from it, and assumed that, even then, he was on ground where no man of to-day, at least, had ever stood before. He suffered a great deal on that trip, but determination kept up his courage and he finally reached the goal for which he had set out. And from the summit of that peak he glimpsed the unexplored valley.

“It seems strange that, in this day and age, such a valley could remain unknown. But such seems to be the case. Andy and I have found in our travels over the state that there are vast stretches of forest land where a white man has probably never set his foot. But in almost every case, there was nothing to draw him. This instance is different.

 Prev. P 14/172 next