Warned by this catastrophe, the First
Relief decided to preserve its supplies for the return trip by hanging
them in parcels from ropes tied to the boughs of trees.
The ten kept together courageously until the fifteenth; then Mr. M.D.
Richey, James Curtis, and Adolph Brenheim gave up and turned back. Mr.
Tucker, fearing that others might become disheartened and do likewise,
guaranteed each man who would persevere to the end, five dollars per
diem, dating from the time the party entered the snow. The remaining
seven pushed ahead, and on the eighteenth, encamped on the summit
overlooking the lake, where the snow was said to be forty feet in
depth.
The following morning Aguilla Glover and Daniel Rhodes were so
oppressed by the altitude that their companions had to relieve them of
their packs and help them on to the cabins, which, as chronicled in a
previous chapter, the party reached on the nineteenth of February,
1847.
[Footnote 9: Of the Forlorn Hope.]
CHAPTER XI
WATCHING FOR THE SECOND RELIEF PARTY--"OLD NAVAJO"--LAST FOOD IN CAMP.
After the departure of the First Relief we who were left in the
mountains began to watch and pray for the coming of the Second Relief,
as we had before watched and prayed for the coming of the First.
Sixteen-year-old John Baptiste was disappointed and in ill humor when
Messrs. Tucker and Rhodes insisted that he, being the only able-bodied
man in the Donner camp, should stay and cut wood for the enfeebled,
until the arrival of other rescuers.
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