Elinor Eddy, who passed away in the Murphy cabin on the seventh of
February, was the only wife and mother called by death, in either camp,
before the arrival of the First Relief. Both Patrick Breen's diary and
William G. Murphy, then a lad of eleven years, assert that Mrs. Eddy
and little Margaret, her only daughter, were buried in the snow near
the Murphy cabin on the ninth of February. Furthermore, the Breen Diary
and the death-list of the Donner Party show that not a husband or
father died at the Lake Camp during the entire period of the party's
imprisonment in the mountains.[23]
How, then, could that First Relief, or either of the other relief
parties see--how could they even have imagined that they saw--"wife
sitting at the side of her husband who had just died, mutilating his
body," or "the daughter eating her father," or "mother that of her
children," or "children that of father and mother"? The same questions
might be asked regarding the other revolting scenes pictured by the
_Star_.
The seven men who first braved the dangers of the icy trail in the work
of rescue came over a trackless, ragged waste of snow, varying from ten
to forty feet in depth,[24] and approached the camp-site near the lake
at sunset. They halloed, and up the snow steps came those able to drag
themselves to the surface. When they descended into those cabins, they
found no cheering lights.
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