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Show 86 BY PATH AND TRAIL. DON ESTABAN'S STORY. " Were you ever lost on the desert, Senor Guiteras?" " No," he answered, " but when I was a young man and was not as well acquainted with the ways of the Disierto as I am now, I had a trying experience, and nearly lost my life. " It was on the ' Muerto,' and I wandered ninety miles over sands so hot that I could scarcely walk on them, though wearing thick- soled shoes. The Muerto desert is in circumference 230 miles, and is, in fact, the bed of an ancient sea, which evaporated or disappeared many thou sands of years ago. During the months of July and Au gust the Muerto is a furnace, where the silence is oppres sive, the glare of the ash- hot sand blinds the eyes, and the burning air sucks water and life from the body of man or beast. I left the ' Digger' camp at the foot of the Corneja mountain early in the week, intending to in spect a copper ' find' discovered by an Indian some fifty miles southwest of the Digger camp. The trail carried me through an ancient barranca, widening into a gorge which opened into a canyon, through which in season flows what is called the Eio Eata. Here I made camp for the day, cooked a meal and slept, for I had started as early as 3 o'clock in the morning. The heat within the canyon marked 90 degrees on a small pocket thermome ter I carried to test the temperature of the nearest water to the reported ' find.' As the air about me carried only 10 or 12 degrees of humidity, this heat in no way incon venienced me. At 4 o'clock that afternoon I awoke, con tinued on through the canyon, and in two hours entered the desert. " You must understand that in this country no man in |