The
party were prisoners!
"All was consternation. The wildest confusion prevailed. In their
eagerness, many went far in advance of the main train. There was
little concert of action or harmony of plan. All did not arrive
at Donner Lake the same day. Some wagons and families did not
reach the lake until the thirty-first day of October, some never
went farther than Prosser Creek, while others, on the evening of
the twenty-ninth, struggled through the snow, and reached the
foot of the precipitous cliffs between the summit and the upper
end of the lake. Here, baffled, wearied, disheartened, they
turned back to the foot of the lake."
These emigrants did not lack in health, strength, or resolution,
but here they were in surroundings absolutely new to them. A sort
of panic seized them now. They scattered; their organization
disintegrated. All thought of conjoint action, of a social
compact, a community of interests, seems to have left them. It
was a history of every man for himself, or at least every family
for itself. All track of the road was now lost under the snow. At
the last pitch up to the summit of the Sierras precipitous cliffs
abounded.
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