Soon thereafter "Old Trapper Greenwood" appeared in San Francisco,
asking for assistance in fitting out a following to go to the mountains
with himself and McCutchen, Mr. George Yount and others in and around
Sonoma and Napa having recommended him as leader. Donations of horses,
mules, beef, and flour had already been sent to his camp in Napa
Valley. Furthermore, Lieut. William L. Maury, U.S.N., Commander at the
port; Don Mariano G. Vallejo, Ex-Commandante-General of California; Mr.
George Yount, and others subscribed the sum of five hundred dollars in
specie toward outfitting Greenwood and the men he should select to
cross the mountains.
Greenwood urged that he should have ten or twelve men on whom he could
rely after reaching deep snow. These, he said, he could secure if he
had the ready money to make advances and to procure the necessary warm
clothing and blankets. He had crossed the Sierras before, when the snow
lay deep on the summit, and now proposed to drive over horses and kill
them at the camps as provisions for the sufferers. If this scheme
should fail, he and his sons with others would get food to the camp on
snowshoes. Thornton says:
The Governor-General of California, after due form, and trusting to
the generosity and humanity of the Government which he represented,
appropriated four hundred dollars on Government account toward
outfitting this relief party.
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