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History of the Donner party - A Tragedy of the Sierra (1907) (308 pages)
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Page: of 308
A PICTURE OF DESOLATION 173
them. They could neither go forward nor return. Cady and
Stone were between Donner Lake and Starved Camp, and
were in a like helpless condition. McCutchen and Miller
were the only ones able to do anything toward saving the
poor creatures who were huddled together at the miserable
camp. All the other men were completely disheartened by
the fearful calamity which had overtaken them. But for the
untiring exertions of these two men, death to all would have
been certain. McCutchen had on four shirts, and yet he became so chilled while trying to kindle the fire, that in getting
warm he burned the back out of his shirts. He only discovered the mishap by the scorching and burning of his flesh.
What a picture of desolation was presented to the inmates
of Starved Camp during the next three days! It stormed
incessantly. One who has not witnessed a storm on the
Sierra can not imagine the situation. A quotation from Bret
Harte’s “ Gabriel Conroy” will afford the best idea of the situation:
“Snow. Everywhere. As far as the eye could reach—
fifty miles, looking southward from the highest white peak.
Filling ravines and gulches, and dropping from the walls of
canyons in white shroud-like drifts, fashioning the dividing
ridge into the likeness of a monstrous grave, hiding the bases
of giant pines, and completely covering young trees and
larches, rimming with porcelain the bowl-like edges of still,
cold lakes, and undulating in motionless white billows to the
edge of the distant horizon. Snow lying everywhere on the
California Sierra, and still falling. It had been snowing in
finely granulated powder, in damp, spongy flakes, in thin,
feathery plumes; snowing from a leaden sky steadily, snowing fiercely, shaken out of purple-black clouds in white
flocculent masses, or dropping in long level lines like white
lances from the tumbled and broken heavens. But always