It is rutted with wheels and trodden down by the feet of many adventurers.
Here and there there are scattered white objects which glisten in the sun, and stand out against the dull deposit of alkali.
Approach, and examine them! They are bones: some large and coarse, others smaller and more delicate.
The former have belonged to oxen, and the latter to men.
For fifteen hundred miles one may trace this ghastly caravan route by these scattered remains of those who had fallen by the wayside.
Looking down on this very scene, there stood upon the fourth of May, eighteen hundred and forty-seven, a solitary traveller.
His appearance was such that he might have been the very genius or demon of the region.
An observer would have found it difficult to say whether he was nearer to forty or to sixty.
His face was lean and haggard, and the brown parchment-like skin was drawn tightly over the projecting bones; his long, brown hair and beard were all flecked and dashed with white; his eyes were sunken in his head, and burned with an unnatural lustre; while the hand which grasped his rifle was hardly more fleshy than that of a skeleton.
As he stood, he leaned upon his weapon for support, and yet his tall figure and the massive framework of his bones suggested a wiry and vigorous constitution.