"...
a number of men, lank and brown 'as is the ribbed sea-sand' —men with
long hair and beards, and faces from which the rigid expression of
suffering was scarcely relaxed. These were the first of the overland
emigrants by the Gila route, who had reached San Diego a few days
before. Their clothes were in tatters, their boots in many cases
replaced by moccasins and except for their rifles and some small
packages rolled in deerskin, they had nothing left of the abundant
stores with which they left home."
In these words, the New York Tribune's correspondent,
Mr. Bayard Taylor, described those whom the desert had marked—those
who had survived. He was himself fresh from what he had considered the
rigors of the route across the Isthmus of Panama: these scarecrow men
made him feel that the overcrowding and foul food on the steamship Panama had been minor indeed.
