Newspapers / The Alamance Gleaner (Graham, … / Jan. 28, 1937, edition 1 / Page 2
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DEATH VALLEY 'i , ?OW DEATH VALLEY WAS NAMED (Prom "Tales of the Old rrontier.") Across the white plain the heat waves shimmered and danced. Mirages of cool lakes appeared, mocking their thirst, and vanished. In the background stood ft range of black-walled mountains through which the emigrants could see no opening. And this was Christmas day. 1840! Early in the spring they had left the Middle West. 100 wagons strong, for toe gold field of California. Then the fatal decision of a part of the train to try a short cut across the mountains had brought them Into this valley whose floor was more than 200 feet below the level of the sea. In it they wandered for weeks of torment. Again the party split. One group. 36 persons in all. young bachelors from Illinois who called themselves "The Jay* hawkers," pressed on toward the moun tain*. 'Some of them died of starvation, some of thirst and others went mad and wandered away Into the desert. In all IS perished before they fought through to safety. The other party, men with families, found a tiny spring and camped there to rest. Then food supplies ran low. Their oxen began to die and their wagons to fall apart In the blistering sun. So Asahel Bennett, their leader, sent two young fellows, Will Manley and John Rogers, forth to find a way oat of the trap. As they departed Mrs. Bennett gave Manley a double handful of rice ? half of all she had? and silently pointed to the hunger-pinched faces of her children. The emigrants now sat down to wait for the return of the two scouts. A week passed ? two ? three ? and still they did not return. At the end of the fourth week all except Asahel Bennett's wife abandoned hope. "They will come back," she declared steadfastly. But they did net, and the emigrants resolved upon one final desperate attempt. They began stripping the canvas covers from the prairie schooners and making pack sad dles to cinch upon their emaciated oxen. And then Manley and Rogers returned ! They spoke but briefly of the days of horror spent In struggling from one water bole to the next across the 250 miles of the Mojave desert, of the dead of the Jay hawker party whom they found along the trail. But they had brought food and, most vital of all. they had found a way out. They guided the party on the long ehmb to the summit of the Panamlnt range. Aa the emigrants reached the Croat and looked back into the inferno from which they had escaped. Asahel Bennett's wife raised her arms In a gesture of farewell. "Good-by, Death Valley 1" she cried. Aad thus It was named. By ELMO SCOTT WATSON N THIS vaUey the heat waves still shim mer and dance across the sandy waste; the mirages still appear and then vanish; and the sun still blazes down to make it the hottest place found in all the world in mid-summer, with re corded temperatures of 137 in the shade and 160 in the sui\. But how different is its reputa tion nearly a century after Asa park in Maine and Mesa Verde in Colorado, come to Death Valley. Here is a winter play ground for you. Come, enjoy it." For Death Valley is now a national monument, administered by the national park service of the department of the inte rior. And so every year, from October to May, thousands of Americans respond to their Un cle Samuel's invitation. For the fear of danger or even of dis comfort in this lost world of lonely desert wastes, of harsh, barren mountains, of brooding silences, is no longer present there. Over the roads and trails once marked by the bones of pioneers, thousands of automo bile tourists now drive in safety, finding there tourist camps, ga rages and gasoline stations and the ever- present roadside stands. ir? "Life Valley" Now. The silence of the desert is no longer broken only by the winds which sweep down from the mountain tops and stir the ever changing sands. The music of resort hotel orchestras blare out and echo from the slopes of the Funeral range or the Panamints. Moreover, Death Valley, once in habited mainly by snakes and lizards, now has a permanent human population of nearly 200 ? the last census figures show that. Some of them have built lux urious homes there and they, with the thousands of tourists who come every year by auto mobile, by railroad, by bus line ? yes, even by airplane ? , have transformed Death Valley into Life Valley. ? ? ? Dramatic as is the incident which gave Death Valley its name, scarcely less dramatic is the story of how the borax in dustry, which spread the fame of Death Valley, got its start in this region. In 1880 Aaron Winters lived with his wife, Rosie, in a frontier home in Ash Meadows, a tiny oasis east of Death Valley. To their home one day came a wandering prospector who told the Winters of the borax deposits in the state of Nevada and how a great fortune awaited anyone who could find more such de posits. Winters asked many ques tions, including the question of how a person could know borax if he discovered it. He was told that the best test was to pour certain chemicals over the sup posed borax deposit and then to THE DEVIL'S GOLF COURSE? An expanse of salty deposit, crys tallised Into weird and fantastic shapes, varying la height from an Inch to three feet and more. It U a strikinc testimonial to the fact that the loor el Death Valley was once a great inland sea. bel Bennett's wife christened it with that dread name of Death Valley 1 There was a time when most Americans believed the lay ing "See Death Valley and die!" But that has been changed since Uncle Sent" has been saying to "After you have Smoky moun Carolina. Yellow Wyoming, Acadia fire it. If it were borax the chem icals would burn with a green flame. "It Bonn Green.!" Winters had made many visits into Death Valley, and after talk ing to the prospector was con vinced that there was borax there. So he set out immediately, accompanied by his wife, and soon afterwards encamped on Furnace creek. In the marsh - (which appears on Furnace creek in the spring) he gathered the most likely-looking deposit. That night he made the test as the prospector had told him. There was a breathless moment of suspense and then Aaron Win ters cried "Rosie, she burns green! We're rich!" The borax industry of Death Valley had come into existence. The next problem was how to get the rich borax deposits out of the valley. Out of necessity came the famous 20-mule team wagons named "Rufus," saved the lives I of between three and four hun- | dred travelers in the Colorado and Mojave deserts as well as Death Valley. Then in 1917 Death Valley "got him" at last. During one of his trips he came to a spring which he had always used and drank from it. He offered some water to Rufus, but the dog refused to drink. The spring had become infected. After a terrible trip to his home in Pasadena, where Mrs. Beck awaited their return, OLD T1ME&S' GRAVES? These two simple slabs of wood mark the last restlnf places of two of Death Valley's best beloved char acters: Jim Dayton, a driver of one of the famous 20-mule teams, who was buried on the spot where he perished in 1898 with all of his team, and "Shorty" Harris, who outlived him by nearly four dec ades, and was laid to rest, at his expressed desire, beside his buddy. which are inseparably associated with the name of Death Valley. But borax is not the only wealth which this valley con tains. Gold was discovered there * many years ago and it has been the favorite haunt for the old time prospector. Perhaps the most famous of these prospec tors ? certainly the most publi cized ? was the man who became known as "Death Valley Scotty." He was Walter Scott, an ex cowboy and once a champion rough rider with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Every so often "Scotty" came out of Death Valley with a pock et full of gold. He was believed to have a secret mine and cer tainly its wealth seemed to be inexhaustible. He hired special trains to take him to Chicago or New York. When he came to town he threw money out of hotel windows and traffic jams caused by scrambling people re sulted. He built a desert palace which was said to have cost more than $2,000,000. He found other and new ways of "blowing" his money ? all of which landed him on the front pages of news papers all over the country and he became a perpetual adver tisement, an official "press agent," for this region which re mained a land of mystery for so long. The Good Samaritan. Another picturesque figure in the history of this region was the man who became known as the "Good Samaritan of Death Val ley." Lou Westcott Beck was his name and he was one of the great number of men who sought wealth in this valley of death. But instead of finding his fortune he nearly lost his life in its bar ren wastes. When he finally es caped he resolved to devote his life to saving others from the fate which had almost been his. Each summer Beck made a trip into the valley of purple mist and great thirst, piling up rocks and placing signs on them to guide prospectors to water holes, searching for lost trav elers and guiding them to safety. For 13 years he did this work and during that time he and his 1 companion, ? Newfoundland dog the "Good Samaritan" went to bed ill and never rose again. The work which he inaugurated was carried on by the United States geological survey which erected the numerous sign posts that saved the earliest tourists from suffering the fate of so many of the pioneers in the valley. Another interesting character in Death Valley history was "Dad" Fairbanks who won fame as the "official rescuer" of the region. During his career in that role "Dad" saved the lives of more than 50 persons who had I?3T 1 DEATH VALLEY SCOTTY become lost in the desert. He called the buzzards, which wheel in great circles over the valley, his "spies." "When the buzzards fly low and hover over one spot, I know some animal is in distress" he was accustomed to explain, "But when they hover high I know some human being is weaken ing under the blistering sun and needs my help out there in the desert." So to the lore of Death Valley Is added the ironical (act that these birds more than once robbed themselves of their meal because their method of flying revealed to "Dad" Fairbanks' keen eye* the fact that a human being was in distress. ? Wastm Ntinpapcr Unto*. e e C Science Service.? WNU Service. Samples of Ocean Bottom Obtained by a New Device WASHINGTON.? Samples of ocean bottom gouged out of ten feet of solid mud or silt by a new type of apparatus have been undergoing analysis at the Carnegie Institution of Wash ington. They are expected to tell new stories of the geologi cal and biological history of the depths, hitherto hidden because no previously existing form of apparatus could do more than scoop up a superficial handful of material from the ocean floor. The device, called a core sam pler, has been developed in the lab oratories of the Carnegie institution by Dr. Charles A. Piggot of the geo physical laboratory. It consists of a short, thick-walled cylinder with a plunger that can be driven forward by a charge of cannon powder. At tached is a ten-foot tube of tem pered steel, which is called the bit. When this sampler comes into con tact with the bottom, the powder is exploded and the bit is driven into the ocean floor. Sample Comes np in Tube. The bit is lined with a thin brass tube, which is removable. The ocean bottom sample remains in this, to be corked up and filed away for study in the laboratories on shore. A new lining is shoved into the bit, the powder chamber in the gun reloaded, and the sampler is ready to take another bite. The first real deep-water samples were taken through the co-opera tion of one of the great commer cial cable companies, which had to send out a powerful repair ship, the Lord Kelvin, to mend a break in a trans-Atlantic cable. Keeping U| Cystine's Presence Is Necessary for Growth of Cancer WASHINGTON.? Cancer tis sue, contrary to generally held opinion, requires file same sort of protein nourishment for its growth as normal tissue does. Experiments showing this are reported by Drs. Carl Voegtlin, J. M. Johnson and J. W. Thomp son, of the United States pub lic health service's national In stitute of Health, in Public Health Reports. The results of the studies, in which the growth of cancers in mice were checked by certain types of diet, cannot be applied in the treat ment of cancer in man, Dr. Voegt lin emphasized. New fundamental knowledge of the chemistry of cancer growth, however, has been gained. Needs Cystine to Grow. The growth of breast cancer in mice can be checked, Dr. Voegtlin and associates found, by feeding the animals a diet deficient, though not* entirely lacking, in cystine. This chemical is an amino acid, one of the essential building stones of all tissue proteins. Cystine is also part of another chemical, glutathione, which is widely distributed in body tissues. After the cancer growth in the mice had been checked for about a month by the diet deficient in cys tine, repeated injection of glutathi one caused a marked stimulation of the cancer growth. This shows that glutathione is necessary for the rapid growth of cancer tissue just as it is apparently necessary for growth of normal tissue. Old Lady of Ice Age Found in California LOS ANGELES.? An Old Lady- of the Ice Age is America's newest claimant for the title of oldest in habitant. Unearthed near here by federal WPA workmen, the skull and other bones of the ancient individual have been identified by anthropologists as belonging to "a female well ad vanced in years." Or. A. O. Bowden and Ivan Lo patin, anthropologists of the Uni versity of Southern California, have reported the verdict to the journal Science. The skull when unearthed early in 1936 attracted quick scientific no tice because, in the same geologic stratum of earth, bones of a mam moth were discovered. Dr. Bowden concludes that the 13-foot blanket of earth covering the ancient woman and the elephant has not been dis turbed, and that the old woman must have seen with her own eyes the strange big animals such as mammoths and saber-toothed tigers in the closing days of America's Ice Age. Students in College Suffer Severely From Eyestrain Damage to Vision in Four Years Measured THE student pays dearly for a college education when, in addition to financial costs, he gives up part of his precious eyesight. It has long been sus pected that four years of close and long attention to books might impair the vision. Tests of grade and high school stu dents have been made to de termine the effect of school work on eyesight, but there hasbeen little actual knowledge of what happens to the eye sight of college students. The extent of damage to vision resulting from the strain on the eyes incurred in obtaining a college education has now been measured on one thousand University of Min nesota students. Many Defective at Start. Of these thousand, about one in six had seriously defective vision on entering college, Dr. Ruth E. Boynton, associate professor of pre ventive medicine and public health at the university, found. At the end of the four years in college, this percentage had increased. About one in four of the students had se riously defective vision at the time of graduation. Most of these students were en rolled in the medical school or the college of education. Upon enter ing the university, eye examinations showed that about half of them had normal vision. About another third (30 per cent) had slight defects in vision, and 18 per cent, not quite a fifth, had serious defects in vision. The number with seriously defec tive vision increased to nearly a fourth (24 per cent) by the time of graduation. College work was hardest on the eyesight of those students who start ed out with the greatest visual han dicap, Dr. Boynton told a confer ence of the National Society for the Prevention of Blindness. Few Hormones Are Employed by the Pituitary Gland WASHINGTON. ? The pitui tary, master gland of the body, plays its part in growth, sex, ma ternal instinct and other acts of life's drama by means of only a few instead of many hormones or chemical messen gers ? three or four at the most instead of twelve or more. This revolutionary idea of the number of hormones produced by the pituitary gland appears in a re port by the Carnegie Institution of Washington of the activities of mem bers of its staff engaged in research on the endocrine glands. For years the pages of scientific literature have been crowded with reports of new-found activities of the pituitary gland. Each of these, it was thought, was due to a separate hormone produced by the gland for the particular activity observed. Besides growth and sex, the gland affects the body's use of sugar and water, the activity of the thyroid and adrenal glands, milk production and maternal instinct. Prolactin a Busy Hormone. The latest studies seem to show that many of these activities are due to a single hormone of the pitui tary, called prolactin because its first discovered effect was its con trol of milk production. This hormone now is reported to be the one responsible for the pitui tary's effect on sugar utilization and on the adrenal glands. With the thyroid-stimulating hormone of the pituitary, prolactin is responsi ble for the pituitary's effect on growth. It also affects the sex glands and, at least in some species, the liver. Carnegie scientists engaged in the researches giving this new concep tion of the pituitary gland were: Drs. Oscar Riddle, Robert W. Bates, J. P. Schooley, G. C. Smith, E. L. Lahr and M. W. Johnson. Research by scientists at other institutions contributed to the new picture of the powerful and versatile pituitary gland. Ancient Corpse's Last Meal Under Microscope BERLIN. ? The last meal of a corpse many centuries old, found in a bog where acid water had pre served the body against decay, has been made the subject of scientific examination by Prof. Fritz Netolitz ky of the University of Czernowitz, Poland. A sample of the contents of the digestive tract, on microscopic study, proved to consist mainly of rye and millet, both very badly threshed and ground. There were also traces of some kind of ? pod vegetable, possibly peas. Professor Netolitzky's somewhat macabre research is regarded as of real scientific importance in con nection with the history of grain cultivation in nartbani Europe in prehistoric tima. Home Heating Hints Refueling Furnace Fire Correct Way Means Most Heat at Lowest Fuel Cost '"pHERE'S an art in refueling a *? furnace fire that enables you to get the most heat at the least cost. There's more to it than just scooping up a few shovelfuls of coal and tossing it into the firepot. The economical way is simple. Shake the grates gently when necessary. Don't do it vigorously and shake a lot of live coals into the ashpit. When you see a slight red glow in the ashpit, stop shak ing. Then pull a mound of live coals from the rear to the front of the firebox, just inside the fire door, using your shovel or a hoe. Don't disturb the ash under the live coals. That gives you ? flr* bed sloping down from the edge of the door to the rear. Now, shovel a charge of fresh coal into the hollow toward the back of the furnace, being careful to leave a mound of live coals in front. These live coals ignite the gases rising from the contact of the fresh and hot coal, causing them to burn. Finally, when these gases are thoroughly burned, clean the ash pit and reset the dampers. The turn damper in the smoke pipe, remember, should be nearly closed. The check damper should be entirely closed. The ashpit damper should be open. Open the slide in the fired oor only about the width of a wooden match. That's the way to refuel eco nomically and the best way to ob tain the most satisfactory results. Copyright. ? WNU Service. Foreign Words ^ and Phrases ' Ad Kalendas Graecas. (L.) At the Greek Kalends, never (the Greeks having no Kalends). Bel esprit. (F.) A brilliant mind. Compos mentis. (L.) In posses sions of one's faculties. De novo. (L.) Anew, afresh. Esprit de corps. (F.) Loyalty to one's comrades; the spirit of sol idarity. Improwisatore, improwisa trice. (It.) An impromptu poet or poetess. Mauvaise quart d'heure. (F.) A bad quarter of an hour; an awk war or uncomfortable experi ence. Miss REE LEEF J says: ^ crm *CAPUDINE relieves I HEADACHE I I quicker because! its liquid... I a/neatfy (Li.ic&ed'\ Be Worthy The only way to compel men to speak good of us is to do it. ? Vol taire. Still Coughing? Ko matter how many mwilclnf you have tried for your cough, chest cold or bronchial Irritation, you can get relief no* with Creomulslon. Serious trouble may be brewing and you cannot afford to take a chance with anything less than Creomul Glon, which goes light to the seat of the trouble to aid nature ta soothe and heal the Inflamed mem branes as the germ-laden phlegm Is loosened and expelled. Even If other remedies bare failed, dont be discouraged, your druggist Is authorized to guarantee Creomulslon and to refund your money If you are not satisfied with results from the very first bottle. Oct Creomulslon right now. (Adv.) PEP/ The foe of PEP is Con stjpatiOTjThefoeof of PtPis ?ratTomc-UMTiyr ?BtOklN muatr.
The Alamance Gleaner (Graham, N.C.)
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Jan. 28, 1937, edition 1
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