The fires of Moloch, the dreadful
suttee, were sacrifices which long religious education sanctioned, and
in which the devotees perished amidst the plaudits of admiring
multitudes. This woman had chosen a death of solitude, of hunger, of
bitter cold, of pain-racked exhaustion, and was actuated by only the
pure principles of wifely love. Already the death-damp was gathering on
George Donner's brow. At the utmost, she could hope to do no more than
smooth the pillow of the dying, tenderly clasp the fast-chilling hand,
press farewell kisses upon the whitening lips, and finally close the
dear, tired eyes. For this, only this, she was yielding life, the world,
and her darling babes. Fitted by culture and refinement to be an
ornament to society, qualified by education to rear her daughters to
lives of honor and usefulness, how it must have wrung her heart to allow
her little ones to go unprotected into a wilderness of strangers. But
she could not leave her husband to die alone. Rather solitude, better
death, than desert the father of her children. O, Land of the Sunset!
let the memory of this wife's devotion be ever enshrined in the hearts
of your faithful daughters! In tablets thus pure, engrave the name of
Tamsen Donner.
-
When the June sunshine gladdened the Sacramento Valley, three little
barefooted girls walked here and there among the houses and tents of
Sutter's Fort.
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