474          THE CHICAGO RECORD'S
published reports as to the prospects at Harqua Hala, and in a week or two there was another general rush for the diggings. The railroads did a land office business for several weeks in carrying men as far as the Colorado river. From there the travelers to Harqua Hala packed themselves on little river steamboats at exorbitant rates of travel. Hundreds of miners who had hardly a dollar tramped over the mountains I50 and 200 miles to the mines. Some men in their anxiety to get to Harqua Hala with their camp outfits and personal belongings, packed them in barrels and rolled the barrels over oo0 miles to the camp.
Even the schoolboys caught the infection from their elders, and ran away from school and home. Several persons starved to death in the stampede. In forty days the population of Harqua Hala grew from 50 to over 2,ooo. As is generally the case, the few good mines there were taken up before the news of the find went abroad, and there was nothing for the deluded miners to do when they got to Harqua Hala but sit about camp and watch their more lucky associates dig out the rock. Prices for all kinds of food went to the top mark with rapidity. After a few weeks' idleness the mining population at Harqua Hala dwindled away at the rate of Ioo or more a day. A large part of them are now searching among the mountains, through the canyons, on the desert, and in the foothills for prospects of their own. A good, active miner will locate half a dozen mining claims in a year, but less than o0 per cent of these are ever worked.
Had not the Klondike rush turned the undivided attention of gold-seekers to the arctic placer mines in the Upper Yukon basin, it is highly probable there would have been a rush of some magnitude to the gold fields in the Mojave desert of southern California.