Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/26

16 AMOS WLLIAM HARTMAN Cut-Off in 1849 Stansbury found abandoned wagons, great quantities of good clothing, trunks, books, tool- chests and other articles, both useful and otherwise. 71 Many animals perished on the barren stretches between the Humboldt and Goose Lake, on the northern road to California. 72 But death and destruction were at their worst on the forty miles of desert between the Sink of the Hum- boldt and Carson River. This was the last straw for many a poor beast, already worn out by the previous hardsip. An emigrant of 1850 states that the number of dead horses, mules, and oxen in the forty miles was estimated at 5,000 head. 73 Another emigrant of that year states that dead animals were so numerous that he had counted fifty within a distance of forty rods. 74 The putrifying carcasses made traveling very unpleasant and furnished breeding places for disease germs. As illus- trative of the immense number of dead animals which perished on the desert the experience of a small party of travelers in 1855 may prove helpful. Crossing at night when it was so dark that they could not see the road they kept on the beaten tracks by following the trail of bones and by listening to the sound of their horses hoofs on the hard beaten track. 75 But abandoned wagons and property also lined the road across the desert, besides being scattered profusely at points where the road entered and left it. An emigrant of 1850 estimated that there was an average of thirty abandoned wagons to the mile across the desert—a total of 1,200. Along the Carson River at the point where the road left the desert were an additional 2,000 within a space of six miles. Not over one-fourth of the wagons 71 op. Cit., p . 114. 72 Delano, op. cit., p. 184. 73 Edmunson, op. cit., p. 533. 74 Langworthy, op. cit., p. 148. 75 Remy, A Journey to Great Salt Lake City, Vol. 1 , pp. 56-57 . 76 Harlan, op. cit., pp. 58-60.