The Spring following my interview with Nicholas Clark, John Baptiste came to San Jose, and Mr. McCutchen brought him to talk with me.  John, always a picturesque character, had become a hop picker in hop season, and a fisherman the rest of the year.  He could not restrain the tears which coursed down his bronzed cheeks as he spoke of the destitution and suffering in the snow-bound camps; of the young unmarried men who had been so light-hearted on the plains and brave when first they faced the snows.  His voice trembled as he told how often they had tried to break through the great barriers, and failed; hunted, and found nothing; fished, and caught nothing; and when rations dwindled to strips of beef hide, their strength waned, and death found them ready victims.  He declared,

The hair and bones found around the Donner fires were those of cattle.  No human flesh was used by either Donner family.  This I know, for I was there all winter and helped get all the wood and food we had, after starvation threatened us.  I was about sixteen years old at the time.  Our four men died early in December and were buried in excavations in the side of the mountain.  Their bodies were never disturbed.  As the snows deepened to ten and twelve feet, we lost track of their location.

When saying good-bye, he looked at me wistfully and exclaimed:  “Oh, little Eliza, sister mine, how I suffered and worked to help keep you alive.  Do you think there was ever colder, stronger winds than them that whistled and howled around our camp in the Sierras?”

He returned the next day, and in his quaint, earnest way expressed keenest regret that he and Clark had not remained longer in camp with my father and mother.

“I did not feel it so much at first; but after I got married and had children of my own, I often fished and cried, as I thought of what I done, for if we two men had stayed, perhaps we might have saved that little woman.”

His careworn features lightened as I bade him grieve no more, for I realized that he was but a boy, overburdened with a man’s responsibilities, and had done his best, and that nobly.  Then I added what I have always believed, that no one was to blame for the misfortunes which overtook us in the mountains.  The dangers and difficulties encountered by reason of taking the Hastings Cut-off had all been surmounted—­two weeks more and we should have reached our destination in safety.  Then came the snow!  Who could foresee that it would come earlier, fall deeper, and linger longer, that season than for thirty years before?  Everything that a party could do to save itself was done by the Donner Party; and certainly everything that a generous, sympathizing people could do to save the snow-bound was done by the people of California.

III

THE REPORT OF THOMAS FALLON—­DEDUCTIONS—­STATEMENT OF EDWIN BRYANT—­PECULIAR CIRCUMSTANCES.