marchers encountered from two to five feet of snow, and could go no farther. They were prisoners. The day was October 28.

Then was the time when agreement in council and common action in one supreme effort might have brought deliverance. The train had halted at Truckee Lakecalled Donner Lake since the events here described-and was scattered over the neighborhood for several miles, each family or group living in or near its wagons. For several days the different sections of the caravan acted independently in various endeavors to proceed, but without success. Finally the uselessness of such isolated attempts was acknowledged, and all the emigrants were at last brought together for one determined struggle. Wagons were abandoned, since the folly of trying to move them through twenty or thirty miles of snow-covered mountains was obvious. A pack-train was formed, and in that shape the expedition started on its last march as an organized body. The effort failed. Men, women, children, oxen and mules floundered through the snow until the hopelessness of the action was plain,'1 and then gave it up and got back to the camps as best they could. On their return the people held a council in which it was decided to kill the animals, prepare their carcasses for food and try once more on foot.

This decision was never carried into effect. While they slept that night in their hastily built shelters a great snow came, and all knew what it meant. Most of the oxen and mules were covered up and never found. As soon as the downfall was ended some of the men cut poles and probed in the drifts for the buried animals, by which

1 They got as far as the precipice where the tracks of the Central Pacific Railway now meet the wagon road.

379.-Wagons and emigrants moving across the country from Sacramento to the gold-bearing streams. became miners. From a sketch by Cooper.

On arrival there they

marchers encountered from two to five feet of snow, and could go no farther. They were prisoners. The day was October 28.

Then was the time when agreement in council and common action in one supreme effort might have brought deliverance. The train had halted at Truckee Lakecalled Donner Lake since the events here described-and was scattered over the neighborhood for several miles, each family or group living in or near its wagons. For several days the different sections of the caravan acted independently in various endeavors to proceed, but without success. Finally the uselessness of such isolated attempts was acknowledged, and all the emigrants were at last brought together for one determined struggle. Wagons were abandoned, since the folly of trying to move them through twenty or thirty miles of snow-covered mountains was obvious. A pack-train was formed, and in that shape the expedition started on its last march as an organized body. The effort failed. Men, women, children, oxen and mules floundered through the snow until the hopelessness of the action was plain,' and then gave it up and got back to the camps as best they could. On their return the people held a council in which it was decided to kill the animals, prepare their carcasses for food and try once more on foot.

This decision was never carried into effect. While they slept that night in their hastily built shelters a great snow came, and all knew what it meant. Most of the oxen and mules were covered up and never found. As soon as the downfall was ended some of the men cut poles and probed in the drifts for the buried animals, by which

1 They got as far as the precipice where the tracks of the Central Pacific Railway now meet the wagon road.

379.-Wagons and emigrants moving across the country from Sacramento to the gold-bearing streams. became miners. From a sketch by Cooper.

On arrival there they

method a few of the frozen beasts were fortunately discovered. Other men set about the building of log cabins and the collection of wood for fuel. Storm followed storm; the little cabins were soon hidden from sight; and in a short time the emigrants were living beneath the snow. There was no outward sign of a human habitation in the dreary waste save an occasional hole, and icy steps that led downward.

On days when the weather permitted them to do so the men came up from below, chopped down trees, cut them into pieces and dropped them into the cabins for firewood. They could only hew off such parts of the trunks as projected above the snow. When the scene was visited in after days, and measurements taken, it was found that many of the stumps thus left standing were from fifteen to twenty-two feet high. Under a sky-avalanche of that depth the members of the slowly lessening band fought for existence. Sometimes they visited one another. The meat obtained from frozen animals found by probing in the drifts lasted about six weeks. After that the people boiled ox hides into a sort of paste and lived on it. Their drink was melted snow. When the ox hides were gone they boiled the bones. There were many children-some very young-in the party.

One of the emigrants kept a record of these and other things, and some of the circumstances he wrote down may be included in this narrative. Others may not be. Here are occasional entries from the diary of Patrick Breen:1

Dec. 17. Pleasant; William Murphy returned from the mountain party last evening; Baylis Williams died night before last; Milton and Noah started for Donner's eight days ago; not returned yet; think they are lost in the snow.

1 His diary was published in full in the "Nashville Whig" of September 4, 1847.