A Study in Scarlet (Serial Edition Cover) — page 100: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ae _ 92 A STUDY IN SCARLET. hardiest of the braves are glad to lose sight of those _ awesome plains, and to find themselves once more upon — their prairies. The coyote skulks among the scrub, the buzzard flaps heavily through the air, and the clumsy grizzly bear lumbers through the dark ravines, and picks up such sustenance as it can amon; the rocks. These are the sole dwellers in the wilderness. In the whole world there can be no more dreary view than that from the northern slope of the Sierra Blanco. As far as the eye can reach stretches the great flat’ plain-land, all dusted over with patches of alkali, and intersected by clumps of the dwarfish chaparral bushew. 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 1s no bird in the steel-blue heaven, no movement upon the dull, gray earth—above all, there is absolute silence. Listen as one may, there is no shadow of a sound ir 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. Look- ing down from the Sierra Blanco, one sees a pathway traced out across the desert, which winds away and Its lost in the extreme distance. It is rutted with wheels and trodden down by the feet of many adventurers. Here and there are scattered white objects which glisten in the sun, and stand out against the dull deposit-of al- kah. Approach, and examine them! They are bones; some large and coarse, others smaller and more delicate. ‘ | Comicboo