From the September 16, 1876 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“San Francisco, Cal.–A dispatch from Los Angeles narrates a terrible tale of suffering on the Colorado desert. Henry Smith, from St. Louis, with one companion and a pack train, left Yuma for Los Angeles and wandered four days on the desert without water. Smith opened veins of his arm and drank the blood, which clotted in his throat. He then cut his windpipe to remove it, and died in a few hours after. His companion reached the station in the last stage of exhaustion.”