Captain Tucker's
party was composed of men of great nerve and hardihood, yet, as will be
seen, the trip was almost as much as their lives were worth.
On the morning of the nineteenth of February, 1847, the relief party of
Captain R. P. Tucker began the descent of the gorge leading to Donner
Lake.
Let us glance ahead at the picture soon to be unfolded to their gaze.
The mid-winter snows had almost concealed the cabins. The inmates lived
subterranean lives. Steps cut in the icy snow led up from the doorways
to the surface. Deep despair had settled upon all hearts. The dead were
lying all around, some even unburied, and nearly all with only a
covering of snow. So weak and powerless had the emigrants become, that
it was hardly possible for them to lift the dead bodies up the steps out
of the cabins. All were reduced to mere skeletons. They had lived on
pieces of rawhide, or on old, castaway bones, which were boiled or
burned until capable of being eaten. They were so reduced that it seemed
as if only a dry, shriveled skin covered their emaciated frames. The
eyes were sunken deep in their sockets, and had a fierce, ghastly,
demoniacal look. The faces were haggard, woe-begone, and sepulchral. One
seldom heard the sound of a voice, and when heard, it was weak,
tremulous, pitiful.
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