History of the Donner Party: A Tragedy of the SierraMcGlashan, C. F. (Charles Fayette)
History
History of the Donner Party: A Tragedy of the Sierra
McGlashan, C. F. (Charles Fayette)
Donner Party; Overland journeys to the Pacific
"It never ceased raining all that day nor the next night, and we were
obliged to stand around the fire. Everything we had was wet. They had
stacked up our dried beef and flour in a pile, and put the saddles and
pack saddles over it as well as they could, but still it got more or
less wet. The third morning it stopped raining about daylight, and the
sun came out clear and warm. We made scaffolds and spread our meat all
out, hung up our blankets and clothing on lines, and by keeping up fires
and with the help of the sun, we managed to get everything dry by night.
The next morning we packed up and started on until we came to a little
valley, where we found some grass for our horses. We stayed there that
night. The next day we got to Steep Hollow Creek, one of the branches
of Bear River. This stream was not more than a hundred feet wide, but it
was about twenty feet deep, and the current was very swift. We felled a
large pine tree across it, but the center swayed down so that the water
ran over it about a foot deep. We tied ropes together and stretched them
across to make a kind of hand railing, and succeeded in carrying over
all our things. We undertook to make our horses swim the creek, and
finally forced two of them into the stream, but as soon as they struck
the current they were carried down faster than we could run. One of them
at last reached the bank and got ashore, but the other went down under
the tree we had cut, and the first we saw of him he came up about twenty
yards below, heels upward. He finally struck a drift about a hundred
yards below, and we succeeded in getting him out almost drowned. We then
tied ropes together, part of the men went over, and tying a rope to each
horse, those on one side would force him into the water, and the others
would draw him across. We lost a half day at this place. That night we
climbed a high mountain, and came to snow. Camped that night without any
feed for our horses. The next day, about noon, we reached Mule Springs.
The snow was from three to four feet deep, and it was impossible to go
any farther with the horses. Unpacking the animals, Joe Varro and Wm.
Eddy started back with them to Johnson's Ranch. The rest of us went
to work and built a brush tent in which to keep our provisions. We set
forks into the ground, laid poles across, and covered them with cedar
boughs. We finished them that evening, and the next morning ten of
the men fixed up their packs, consisting of dried beef and flour, and
started on foot, each one carrying about seventy-five pounds. They left
Billy Coon and myself to watch the provisions until they returned. I
have never been in that country since, but I think Mule Springs is on
the opposite side of Bear River from Dutch Flat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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