Messrs. Reed and Greenwood stated that every available means had been tried by them to get the seventeen unfortunates well over the summit before the great storm reached its height.  They said the physical condition of the refugees was such, from the very start, that no persuasion, nor warnings, nor threats could quicken their feeble steps.  All but three of the number were children, with their hands and feet more or less frozen.  Worse still, the caches on which the party had relied for sustenance had been robbed by wild animals, and the severity of the storm had forced all into camp, with nothing more than a breastwork of brush to shelter them.  Mrs. Elisabeth Graves died the first night, leaving to the party the hopeless task of caring for her emaciated babe in arms, and her three other children between the ages of nine and five years.  Soon, however, the five-year-old followed his mother, and the number of starving was again lessened on the third night when Isaac Donner went to sleep beside his sister and did not waken.  The storm had continued so furiously that it was impossible to bury the dead.  Days and nights were spent in steadfast struggling against the threatening inevitable, before the party gave up; and Greenwood and Reed, taking the two Reed children and also Solomon Hook, who walked, started down the mountain, hoping to save their own lives and perhaps get fresh men to complete the pitiful work which they had been forced to abandon.

When Messrs. Reed and Greenwood closed their account of the terrible physical and mental strain their party had undergone, “Mr. Woodworth asked his own men of the relay camp, if they would go with him to rescue those unfortunates at ‘Starved Camp,’ and received an answer in the negative."[10]

The following morning there was an earnest consultation, and so hazardous seemed the trail and the work to be done that for a time all except Eddy and Foster refused to go farther.  Finally, John Stark stepped forward, saying,

“Gentlemen, I am ready to go and do what I can for those sufferers, without promise of pay.”

[Illustration:  ARRIVAL OF THE CARAVAN AT SANTA FE]

[Illustration:  ON THE BANKS OF THE SACRAMENTO RIVER]

By guaranteeing three dollars per day to any man who would get supplies to the mountain camps, and fifty dollars in addition to each man who should carry a helpless child, not his own, back to the settlement, Mr. Eddy[11] secured the services of Hiram Miller, who had just come down with the Second Relief; and Mr. Foster hired, on the same terms, Mr. Thompson from the relay camp.  Mr. Woodworth offered like inducements, on Government account, to the rest of his men, and before the morning was far advanced, with William H. Eddy acting as leader, William Foster, Hiram Miller, Mr. Thompson, John Stark, Howard Oakley, and Charles Stone (who had left us little ones at the lake camp) shouldered their packs and began the ascent.