for the Klondike.

The emigrants had in those days to cross the prairies in wagons. None of
them understood the rigors of the journey they had to undertake, and
many fell by the wayside and died before the promised land was reached.
After a while the track across this great American desert was marked by
the skeletons of oxen and horses, and boxes and barrels which people had
thrown out of their wagons to lighten the load of their poor weary
beasts, to enable them to reach water and shade. Here and there a rough
mound would mark where some poor soul had been unable to bear the
sufferings and had given up his life.

Thousands died in the awful trip across the continent, and thousands
more, who thought to make an easier journey by sea, died of fevers
contracted in crossing the unhealthy Isthmus of Panama, the strip of
land that divides North and South America, separating the Atlantic from
the Pacific Ocean.

The historian Bancroft says that while between four and five hundred
millions of gold were obtained in the seven years following the find in
'49, the gold cost, in human life and labor, three times what it was
actually worth.

A few of the Forty-niners gained the riches they sought, but the greater
part of the gold-seekers barely made a living by the most exhausting
toil.

[Illustration: FORTY-NINERS CROSSING THE PLAINS.]

As regards the Klondike, all the miners who have returned declare that