Our five Donner wagons, and Mrs. Wolfinger’s wagon, were a day or more behind the train, and between twelve and sixteen miles from the spot where we later made our winter camp, when an accident happened which nearly cost us your life, and indirectly prevented our rejoining the train.  Your mother and Frances were walking on ahead; you and Georgia were asleep in the wagon; and father was walking beside it, down a steep hill.  It had almost reached the base of the incline when the axle to the fore wheels broke, and the wagon tipped over on the side, tumbling its contents upon you two children.  Father and uncle, in great alarm, rushed to your rescue.  Georgia was soon hauled out safely through the opening in the back of the wagon sheets, but you were nowhere in sight, and father was sure you were smothering because you did not answer his call.  They worked breathlessly getting things out, and finally uncle came to your limp form.  You could not have lasted much longer, they said.  How thankful we all were that our heaviest boxes had been cached at Geyser Springs!

Much as we felt the shock, there was little time for self-indulgence.  Never were moments of greater importance; for while father and uncle were hewing a new axle, two men came from the head of the company to tell about the snow.  It was a terrible piece of news!

Those men reported that on the twenty-eighth of that month the larger part of the train had reached a deserted cabin near Truckee Lake (the sheet of water now known as Donner Lake) at the foot of Fremont’s Pass in the main chain of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  The following morning they had proceeded to within three miles of the summit; but finding snow there five feet in depth, the trail obliterated, and no place for making camp, they were obliged to return to the spot they had left early in the day.  There, they said, the company had assembled to discuss the next move, and great confusion prevailed as the excited members gave voice to their bitterest fears.  Some proposed to abandon the wagons and make the oxen carry out the children and provisions; some wanted to take the children and rations and start out on foot; and some sat brooding in dazed silence through the long night.

The messengers further stated that on the thirtieth, with Stanton as leader, and despite the falling sleet and snow, the forward section of the party united in another desperate effort to cross the summit, but encountered deeper drifts and greater difficulties.  As darkness crept over the whitened waste, wagons became separated and lodged in the snow; and all had to cling to the mountain-side until break of day, when the train again returned to its twice abandoned camp, having been compelled, however, to leave several of the wagons where they had become stalled.  The report concluded with the statement that the men at once began log-cutting for cabins in which the company might have to pass the winter.