The following evening we were stopped by a thicket of quaking ash, through which it required a full day’s hard work to open a passageway.  Thence our course lay through a wilderness of rugged peaks and rock-bound canons until a heavily obstructed gulch confronted us.  Believing that it would lead out to the Utah River Valley, our men again took their tools and became roadmakers.  They had toiled six days, when W.F.  Graves, wife, and eight children; J. Fosdick, wife, and child, and John Snyder, with their teams and cattle, overtook and joined our train.  With the assistance of these three fresh men, the road, eight miles in length, was completed two days later.  It carried us out into a pretty mountain dell, not the opening we had expected.

Fortunately, we here met the searchers returning with Messrs. Pike and Stanton.  The latter informed us that we must turn back over our newly made road and cross a farther range of peaks in order to strike the outlet to the valley.  Sudden fear of being lost in the trackless mountains almost precipitated a panic, and it was with difficulty that my father and other cool-headed persons kept excited families from scattering rashly into greater dangers.

We retraced our way, and after five days of alternate travelling and road-making, ascended a mountain so steep that six and eight yoke of oxen were required to draw each vehicle up the grade, and most careful handling of the teams was necessary to keep the wagons from toppling over as the straining cattle zigzaged to the summit.  Fortunately, the slope on the opposite side was gradual and the last wagon descended to camp before darkness obscured the way.

The following morning, we crossed the river which flows from Utah Lake to Great Salt Lake and found the trail of the Hastings party.  We had been thirty days in reaching that point, which we had hoped to make in ten or twelve.

The tedious delays and high altitude wrought distressing changes in Mr. Halloran’s condition, and my father and mother watched over him with increasing solicitude.  But despite my mother’s unwearying ministrations, death came on the fourth of September.

Suitable timber for a coffin could not be obtained, so his body was wrapped in sheets and carefully enclosed in a buffalo robe, then reverently laid to rest in a grave on the shore of Great Salt Lake, near that of a stranger, who had been buried by the Hastings party a few weeks earlier.

Mr. Halloran had appreciated the tender care bestowed upon him by my parents, and had told members of our company that in the event of his death on the way, his trunk and its contents, and his horse and its equipments should belong to Captain Donner.  When the trunk was opened, it was found to contain clothing, keepsakes, a Masonic emblem, and fifteen hundred dollars in coin.