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A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
page 94 of 177 (53%)
over with patches of alkali, and intersected by clumps of the
dwarfish chaparral bushes. On the extreme verge of the
horizon lie a long chain of mountain peaks, with their rugged
summits flecked with snow. In this great stretch of country
there is no sign of life, nor of anything appertaining to
life. There is no bird in the steel-blue heaven, no movement
upon the dull, grey earth -- above all, there is absolute
silence. Listen as one may, there is no shadow of a sound in
all that mighty wilderness; nothing but silence -- complete
and heart-subduing silence.

It has been said there is nothing appertaining to life upon
the broad plain. That is hardly true. Looking down from the
Sierra Blanco, one sees a pathway traced out across the
desert, which winds away and is lost in the extreme distance.
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. His appearance was such that he might have been
the very genius or demon of the region. An observer would
have found it difficult to say whether he was nearer to forty
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