FullReads

“That night,” says Virginia, “came the dreaded snow. Around the camp-fires under the trees great feathery flakes came whirling down. The air was so full of them that one could see objects only a few feet away. The Indians knew we were doomed and one of them wrapped his blanket about him and stood all night under a tree. We children slept soundly on our cold bed of snow, which fell over us so thickly that every few moments my mother would have to shake the shawl–our only covering–to keep us from being buried alive. In the morning the snow lay deep on mountain and valley, and we were forced to turn back to a lake we had passed, which was afterward called ‘Donner Lake,’ where the men hastily put up some rough cabins–three of them known as the Breen cabin, the Murphy cabin, and the Reed-Graves cabin. Then the cattle were all killed, and the meat was placed in the snow to preserve it, and we tried to settle down as comfortably as we could, until the season of snow and ice should be over. But the comfort was a poor imitation of the real thing, and now and then, in desperation, a party started out to try to cross the mountains, but they were always driven back by the pitiless storms. Finally, a party of fifteen, known in later days as the ‘Forlorn Hopes,’ started out, ten men and five women, on snow-shoes, led by noble Mr. Stanton, and we heard no more of them until months afterward.

“No pen can describe the dreary hopelessness of those who spent that winter at Donner Lake,” says Virginia. “Our daily life in that dark little cabin under the snow would fill pages and make the coldest heart ache. Only one memory stands out with any bright gleam. Christmas was near, and there was no way of making it a happy time. But my mother was determined to give us a treat on that day. She had hidden away a small store of provisions–a few dried apples, some beans, a bit of tripe, and a small piece of bacon. These she brought out, and when we saw the treasures we shouted for joy, and watched the meal cooking with hunger-sharpened eyes. Mother smiled at our delight and cautioned:

“‘Children, eat slowly, for this one day you can have all you wish!’ and never has any Christmas feast since driven out of my memory that most memorable one at Donner Lake.

“Somehow or other the cold dark days and weeks passed, but as they went by our store of supplies grew less and less, and many died from cold and hunger. Frequently we had to cut chips from the inside of our cabin to start a fire, and we were so weak from want of food that we could scarcely drag ourselves from one cabin to the other, and so four dreadful months wore away. Then came a day when a fact stared us in the face. We were starving. With an almost superhuman strength mother roused. ‘I am going to walk across the mountains,’ she said; ‘I cannot see my children die for lack of food.’ Quickly I stood beside her. ‘I will go, too,’ I said. Up rose Milt and Eliza. ‘We will go with you,’ they said. Leaving the children to be cared for by the Breens and Murphys, we made a brave start. Milt led the way on snow-shoes and we followed in his tracks, but Eliza gave out on the first day and had to go back, and after five days in the mountains, we, too, turned back and mother was almost exhausted, and we went back just in time, for that night there was the most fearful storm of the winter, and we should have died if we had not had the shelter of our cabins. My feet had been badly frozen, and mother was utterly spent from climbing one high mountain after another, but we felt no lasting bad effects from the venture. But we had no food! Our cabins were roofed over with hides, which now we had to take down and boil for food. They saved life, but to eat them was like eating a pot of glue, and I could not swallow them. The roof of our cabin having been taken off, the Breens gave us a shelter, and when Mrs. Breen discovered what I had tried to hide from my own family, that I could not eat the hide, she gave me little bits of meat now and then from their fast-dwindling store.