Snow lying everywhere on the California Sierra, and
still falling. It had been snowing in finely granulated powder, in damp,
spongy flakes, in thin, feathery plumes; snowing from a leaden sky
steadily, snowing fiercely, shaken out of purple-black clouds in white
flocculent masses, or dropping in long level lines like white lances
from the tumbled and broken heavens. But always silently! The woods were
so choked with it, it had so cushioned and muffled the ringing rocks and
echoing hills, that all sound was deadened. The strongest gust, the
fiercest blast, awoke no sigh or complaint from the snow-packed, rigid
files of forest. There was no cracking of bough nor crackle of
underbrush; the overladen branches of pine and fir yielded and gave away
without a sound. The silence was vast, measureless, complete!"
In alluding to these terrible days, in his diary, Mr. Reed says, under
date of March 6:
"With the snow there is a perfect hurricane. In the night there is a
great crying among the children, and even with the parents there is
praying, crying, and lamentation on account of the cold and the dread of
death from hunger and the howling storm. The men up nearly all night
making fires. Some of the men began praying. Several of them became
blind. I could not see the light of the fire blazing before me, nor tell
when it was burning.
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