Daniel Rhoads

“ Since I made that trip I have frequently read about the "sighing", the "soughing" and the "moaning" of the wind through the pine trees and I suppose if any of our party had fallen by the way, the wind and pines together would have sung the requiem and the snow have made the stereotyped "winding-sheet"; but none of our party had ever read any poetry and we were too desperately in earnest both to preserve our own lives and to succor any of the emigrants who might survive to give a thought to sentiment. ”

“ Sutter assured us that we should be followed by other parties as soon as the necessary preparations could be made. For the guidance of those who might follow us and as a signal to any of the emigrants who might be straggling about in the mountains, as well as for our own direction on our return trip, we set fire to every dead pine tree on or near our trail. At the end of every three days journey (10 or 20 miles) we made up a small bundle of dried meat and hung it to the bough of a tree to lighten the burden we carried and for subsistence on our return. ”

“ In about five days travelling on an average five or six miles a day we reached the snow which we found three feet deep. Through this we worried along some five miles when it became too deep for the mules to go any further, it being eight feet deep and falling all the time; a regular storm having set in. Our encountering the snow so deep and so much sooner than we had been led to anticipate utterly disheartened some of the party and six men turned back.
We made a camp and left the mules in charge of one of Sutter's men, a German who went by the sobriquet of Greasy Jim. ”