Donner" Party, pp. 212, 213.


Such then is the story of one of the great emigrant parties who
started West on a hazard of new fortunes in the early days of the
Oregon Trail. Happily there has been no parallel to the
misadventures of this ill-fated caravan. It is difficult
--without reading these, bald and awful details-- to realize the
vast difference between that day and this. Today we may by the
gentle stages of a pleasant railway journey arrive at Donner
Lake. Little trace remains, nor does any kindly soul wish for
more definite traces, of those awful scenes. Only a cross here
and there with a legend, faint and becoming fainter every year,
may be seen, marking the more prominent spots of the historic
starving camp.

Up on the high mountain side, for the most part hid in the
forest, lie the snowsheds and tunnels of the railway, now
encountering its stiffest climb up the steep slopes to the summit
of the Sierras. The author visited this spot of melancholy
history in company with the vice-president of the great railway
line which here swings up so steadily and easily over the
Sierras. Bit by bit we checked out as best we might the fateful
spots mentioned in the story of the Donner Party. A splendid
motor highway runs by the lakeside now. While we halted our own
car there, a motor car drove up from the westward--following that
practical automobile highway which now exists from the plains of
California across the Sierras and east over precisely that trail
where once the weary feet of the oxen dragged the wagons of the
early emigrants. It was a small car of no expensive type. It was