We have found the wild tulip, the primrose, the lupine, the eardrop, the larkspur, and creeping hollyhock, and a beautiful flower resembling the blossom of the beech tree, but in bunches as large as a small sugar loaf, and of every variety of shade, to red and green.

    I botanize and read some, but cook “heaps” more.  There are four
    hundred and twenty wagons, as far as we have heard, on the road
    between here and Oregon and California.

    Give our love to all inquiring friends.  God bless them.  Yours truly,

    MRS. GEORGE DONNER.

The following extract is part of a letter which appeared in The Springfield Journal of July 30, 1846[1]: 

    SOUTH FORK OF THE NEBRASKA, TEN MILES FROM THE CROSSING,

    Tuesday, June 16, 1846

    DEAR FRIEND: 

To-day, at nooning, there passed, going to the States, seven men from Oregon, who went out last year.  One of them was well acquainted with Messrs. Ide and Cadden Keyes, the latter of whom, he says, went to California.  They met the advance Oregon caravan about 150 miles west of Fort Laramie, and counted in all, for Oregon and California (excepting ours), 478 wagons.  There are in our company over 40 wagons, making 518 in all; and there are said to be yet 20 behind.  To-morrow we cross the river, and, by reckoning, will be over 200 miles from Fort Laramie, where we intend to stop and repair our wagon wheels.  They are nearly all loose, and I am afraid we will have to stop sooner, if there can be found wood suitable to heat the tires.  There is no wood here, and our women and children are out now gathering “buffalo chips” to burn, in order to do the cooking.  These chips burn well.

    MRS. GEORGE DONNER.

On the eighteenth of June, Captain Russell, who had been stricken with bilious fever, resigned his office of leader.  My father and other subordinate officers also resigned their positions.  The assembly tendered the retiring officials a vote of thanks for faithful service; and by common consent, ex-Governor Boggs moved at the head of the train and gave it his name.

[Illustration:  FORT LARAMIE AS IT APPEARED WHEN VISITED BY THE DONNER PARTY]

[Illustration:  CHIMNEY ROCK]

We had expected to push on to Fort Laramie without stopping elsewhere, but when we reached Fort Bernard, a small fur-trading post ten miles east of Fort Laramie, we learned that the Sioux Indians were gathering on Laramie Plain, preparing for war with the Crows, and their allies, the Snakes; also that the emigrants already encamped there found pasturage very short.  Consequently, our train halted at this more advantageous point, where our cattle could be sent in charge of herders to browse along the Platte River, and where the necessary materials could be obtained to repair the great damage which had been done to our wagon wheels by the intense heat of the preceding weeks.