n
case she perished and I survived. She declared she would start over the
mountains in the morning. She said, 'I am bound to go to my children.'
She seemed very cold, and her clothes were like ice. I think she had got
in the creek in coming. She said she was very hungry, but refused the
only food I could offer. She had never eaten the loathsome flesh. She
finally lay down, and I spread a feather-bed and some blankets over her.
In the morning she was dead. I think the hunger, the mental suffering,
and the icy chill of the preceding night, caused her death. I have often
been accused of taking her life. Before my God, I swear this is untrue!
Do you think a man would be such a miscreant, such a damnable fiend,
such a caricature on humanity, as to kill this lone woman? There were
plenty of corpses lying around. He would only add one more corpse to the
many!"

"Oh! the days and weeks of horror which I passed in that camp! I had no
hope of help or of being rescued, until I saw the green grass coming up
by the spring on the hillside, and the wild geese coming to nibble it.
The birds were coming back to their breeding grounds, and I felt that I
could kill them for food. I had plenty of guns and ammunition in camp.
I also had plenty of tobacco and a good meerschaum pipe, and almost the
only solace I enjoyed was smoking. In my weak condition it took me two
or three hours every day to get sufficient wood to keep my fire going."

"Some time after Mrs. Donner's death, I thought I had gained sufficient
strength to redeem the pledge I had made her before her death. I
started to go to the camps at Alder Creek to get the money. I had a very
difficult journey. The wagons of the Donners were loaded with tobacco,
powder, caps, shoes, school-books, and dry-goods. This stock was very
valuable, and had it reached California, would have been a fortune to
the Donners. I searched carefully among the bales and bundles of goods,
and found five-hundred and thirty-one dollars. Part of this sum was
silver, part gold. The silver I buried at the foot of a pine tree, a
little way from the camp. One of the lower branches of another tree
reached down close to the ground, and appeared to point to the spot.
I put the gold in my pocket, and started to return to my cabin. I had
spent one night at the Donner tents. On my return I became lost. When it
was nearly dark, in crossing a little flat, the snow suddenly gave way
under my feet, and I sank down almost to