ncy; yet in all four I do not find words
enough to express the horror I experienced during those two months, or
what I still feel when memory reverts to the scene. Suicide would have
been a relief, a happiness, a godsend! Many a time I had the muzzle of
my pistol in my mouth and my finger on the trigger, but the faces of my
helpless, dependent wife and child would rise up before me, and my hand
would fall powerless. I was not the cause of my misfortunes, and God
Almighty had provided only this one horrible way for me to subsist."

Did you boil the flesh?

"Yes! But to go into details--to relate the minutiae--is too agonizing!
I can not do it! Imagination can supply these. The necessary mutilation
of the bodies of those who had been my friends, rendered the ghastliness
of my situation more frightful. When I could crawl about and my lame
foot was partially recovered, I was chopping some wood one day and the
ax glanced and cut off my heel. The piece of flesh grew back in time,
but not in its former position, and my foot is maimed to this day.

"A man, before he judges me, should be placed in a similar situation;
but if he were, it is a thousand to one he would perish. A constitution
of steel alone could endure the deprivation and misery. At this time I
was living in the log-cabin with the fireplace. One night I was awakened
by a scratching sound over my head. I started up in terror, and listened
intently for the noise to be repeated. It came again. It was the wolves
trying to get into the cabin to eat me and the dead bodies."

"At midnight, one cold, bitter night, Mrs. George Donner came to my
door. It was about two weeks after Reed had gone, and my loneliness
was beginning to be unendurable. I was most happy to her the sound of a
human voice. Her coming was like that of an angel from heaven. But she
had not come to bear me company. Her husband had died in her arms. She
had remained by his side until death came, and then had laid him out and
hurried away. He died at nightfall, and she had traveled over the snow
alone to my cabin. She was going, alone, across the mountains. She was
going to start without food or guide. She kept saying, 'My children! I
must see my children!' She feared he would not survive, and told me she
had some money in her tent. It was too heavy for her to carry. She
said, 'Mr. Keseberg, I confide this to your care.' She made me promise
sacredly that I would get the money and take it to her children i