Gabriel Conroy

f ca?ons in white shroud-like drifts, fashioning the dividing ridge into the likeness of a monstrous grave, hiding the bases of giant pines, and completely covering y

lifornia Sierras on the 15th day

eated, filled and possessed earth and sky; it had so cushioned and muffled the ringing rocks and echoing hills, that all sound was deadened. The strongest gust, the fiercest blast, awoke no sigh or complaint from the snow-packed, rigid files of forest. There was no cracking of bough nor crackle of underbrush; the overladen branches of pine and fir yielded and gave way without a sound. The silence was vast, measureless, compl

up. And yet, in the centre of this desolation, in the very stronghold of this grim fortress, there was the mark of human toil. A few trees had been felled at the entrance of the ca?on, and the freshly-cut chips were but lightly covered with snow. They serve

OT

ty of emigrants are

ca?on. Out of prov

o, October

ake, Januar

re, March

ur stock on

r waggons, F

E

name

mick, Jane

phy, Gabr

rges, Joh

nroy, He

nroy, Phil

Dum

ller letters

November 8th

December 1s

January 2nd

ett lost, F

LP

s actual record. So I let it stand, even as it stood this 15th day of March 1848, half-hidden by a thin film of

ed nearer you saw that it was a man-a haggard man, ragged and enveloped in a tattered buffalo robe, but still a man, and a determined one. A young man despite his bent figure and wasted limbs-a young man despite the premature furrows that care and anxiety had set upon his brow and in the corners of his rigid mouth-a young man notwithstanding the expression of savage misanthropy with which suffering and famine had overlaid the frank impulsiveness of youth. When he reached the tree at the entrance of the ca?on, he brushed the film of snow from the canvas placard, and then

w; there was some displacement of the snow around a low mound from which the smoke now plainly issued. Here he stopped, or rather lay down, before an opening or cavern in the snow, and uttered a feeble shout. It was responded to still more feebly. Present

circumstances, position and surroundings, than upon any individual moral power or intellectual force. They had lost the sense of shame in the sense of equality of suffering; there was nothing within them to take the place of the material enjoyments they were losing. They were childish without the ambition or emulation of childhood; they were men and women without the dignity or simplicity of man and womanhood. All that had raised them abo

it from side to side as she sat, with a faith that was piteous. But even more piteous was the fact that none of her companions took the least notice, either by sympathy or complaint, of her aberration. When, a few moments later, she called upon them to be quiet,

breath than to wait for their more orderly and und

thi

d significance-one fiercely, another gloomily, another stupidly, another mechanicall

rail again. The beacon on the summit's burnt out. I left a notice at the D

een partly habit-as she was crawling nearer the speaker. She did not seem to notice the blow or its giver-the apathy with which these

rrow,

e made the same reply he had made for t

rrow,

effigy of her dead baby very caref

sh-voiced woman, glancing at the speaker. "Why don't some on ye take his place? Why do you trust your li

a wild scared face upon her, and then, as if fearful of being dra

replying to the group, rather than

to all. You know what it is. To stay here

nother mound was visible, and disappeared from their view. When h

d Doctor and the ga

oo many in th

azy Doctor

h interloper

nah

come of it, ever sin

d took all his stock at Sweetwater, and A

still a lingering sense of justice. He was hungry, but not unreasonable. Besides, he reme

"He brought the bad luck with him. Ain't my husband dea

opeless vacuity that precedes death by inanition or starvation, it is sometimes very effective. They all assented

you goin

a man, I

fe h

him,

isper between Mrs. Brackett and Dumphy. After this confidence they sat and

rkin' man like us," said Dumphy. "Don'

in' w

in' T

pitals, the intense emphasis put upon this

go an

uggested the gent

ew steps, they fell. Yet even then there was not enough self-respect left among them to feel

said Mr. McCormick, sitting down and abandoning t

gentleman whose faculty of alimentary imagination had been

es

Mr. McCormick; even Mr. Dumphy, w

and injins." There was a very perceptible watering of the mouth in the party, and Mr. March, with the genius of a true narrator, under

dripping with fat!" interp

d goes furder-skins and all-and s

not mirthfully perhaps, but eagerly

flapj

s. Brackett, with a burst of p

his dangerous position, and looked aro