The road was bordered with an almost unbroken barrier of abandoned
wagons, old mining implements, clothes, provisions, and the like. As the
cattle died, the problem of merely continuing the march became worse.
Often the rate of progress was not more than a mile every two or three
hours. Each mile had to be relayed back and forth several times. And
when this desert had sapped their strength, they came at last to the
Sink itself, with its long white fields of alkali with drifts of ashes
across them, so soft that the cattle sank half-way to their bellies. The
dust was fine and light and rose chokingly; the sun was strong and
fierce. All but the strongest groups of pioneers seemed to break here.
The retreats became routs. Each one put out for himself with what
strength he had left. The wagons were emptied of everything but the
barest necessities. At every stop some animal fell in the traces and had
to be cut out of the yoke. If a wagon came to a full stop, it was
abandoned. The animals were detached and driven forward. And when at
last they reached the Humboldt River itself, they found it almost
impossible to ford. The best feed lay on the other side. In the
distance the high and forbidding ramparts of the Sierra Nevadas reared
themselves.
One of these Forty-niners, Delano, a man of some distinction in the
later history of the mining communities, says that five men drowned
themselves in the Humboldt River in one day out of sheer discouragement.
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