The language employed in description seemed to us so coarse and brutal
that we could not forgive its injustice to the living, and to the
memory of the dead. We could but feel that had simple facts been
stated, there would have been no harrowing criticism on account of long
unburied corpses found in the lake cabins. Nor would the sight of
mutilated dead have suggested that the starving survivors had become
"gloating cannibals, preying on the bodies of their companions." Bare
facts would have shown that the living had become too emaciated, too
weak, to dig graves, or to lift or drag the dead up the narrow snow
steps, even had open graves awaited their coming. Aye, more, would have
shown conclusively that mutilation of the bodies of those who had
perished was never from choice, never cannibalistic, but dire
necessity's last resort to ease torturing hunger, to prevent loss of
reason, to save life. Loss of reason was more dreaded than death by
the starving protectors of the helpless.
Fair statements would also have shown that the First Relief reached the
camps with insufficient provision to meet the pressing needs of the
unfortunate. Consequently, it felt the urgency of haste to get as many
refugees as possible to Bear Valley before storms should gather and
delays defeat the purpose of its coming; that it divided what it could
conscientiously spare among those whom it was obliged to leave, cut
wood for the fires, and endeavored to give encouragement and hope to
the desponding, but did not remain long enough to remove or bury the
dead.
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