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.