When the Author conversed with them at this camp he found them the first really heart-broken men he had ever seen.

Some were men of middle age who had left good farms that gave them every need, and these they had left to seek a yellow phantom, and now there were yellow phantoms of a different sort rearing their dreadful forms all about them.

They called themselves foolish gold hunters to forsake a land of plenty for a chance to leave their bones in a hot desert.

More eyes than one filled with tears, and hopes in more than one breast vanished to almost nothing.

More than one would gladly have placed himself back where he could have been assured of the poorest fare he ever saw upon his farm, for bread and water would have been an assurance of life, of which there seemed to be really but little expectation here.
When they left this camp in the canon the trail was between two high rocks, rising like walls on each side.