On his arrival at Sutter’s Fort my father [_the author’s father had led a second and successful effort to cross the mountains to get help_] made known the situation of the emigrants, and Captain Sutter offered at once to do everything possible for their relief. He furnished horses and provisions, and my father and Mr. McClutchen started for the mountains, coming as far as possible with horses and then with packs on their backs proceeding on foot; but they were finally compelled to return. Captain Sutter was not surprised at their defeat. He stated that there were no able-bodied men in that vicinity, all having gone down the country with Frémont to fight the Mexicans. He advised my father to go to Yerba Buena, now San Francisco, and make his case known to the naval officer in command. My father was in fact conducting parties there—when the seven members of the Forlorn Hope arrived from across the mountains. Their famished faces told the story. Cattle were killed and men were up all night, drying beef and making flour by hand mills, nearly two hundred pounds being made in one night, and a party of seven, commanded by Captain Reasen P. Tucker, were sent to our relief by Captain Sutter and the alcalde, Mr. Sinclair. On the evening of February 19, 1847, they reached our cabins, where all were starving. They shouted to attract attention. Mr. Breen clambered up the icy steps from our cabin, and soon we heard the blessed words, “Relief, thank God, relief!” Mark Twain Rides the Overland Stage The career of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) as a river pilot ended when the Civil War stopped steamboat traffic on the Mississippi. He then joined his brother, who was going to Carson City, Nevada, to be secretary to the governor of the territory. The brothers took a steamboat to St. Joseph, Missouri, where they caught the Overland Stage. Sam Clemens’ account of his trip to Nevada is a memorable picture of stagecoach travel across the prairies and mountains just eight years before the railroads made the Overland Stage obsolete. Here is a selection from _Roughing It_: A Memorable Account of Stagecoach Travel from _Roughing It_