A Mother at Starved Camp
Repeating the Litany
Hoping in Despair
Wasting Away
The Precious Lump of Sugar
"James is Dying"
Restoring a Life
Relentless Hunger
The Silent Night-Vigils
The Sight of Earth
Descending the Snow-Pit
The Flesh of the Dead
Refusing to Eat
The Morning Star
The Mercy of God
The Mutilated Forms
The Dizziness of Delirium
Faith Rewarded
"There is Mrs. Breen!"
Very noble was the part which Mrs. Margaret Breen performed in this
Donner tragedy, and very beautifully has that part been recorded by a
woman's hand. It is written so tenderly, so delicately, and with so much
reverence for the maternal love which alone sustained Mrs. Breen, that
it can hardly be improved. This account was published by its author,
Mrs. Farnham, in 1849, and is made the basis of the following sketch.
With alterations here and there, made for the sake of brevity, the
article is as it was written:
There was no food in Starved Camp. There was nothing to eat save a few
seeds, tied in bits of cloth, that had been brought along by some one,
and the precious lump of sugar. There were also a few teaspoonfuls
of tea. They sat and lay by the fire most of the day, with what heavy
hearts, who shall know! They were upon about thirty feet of snow. The
dead lay before them, a ghastlier sight in the sunshine that succeeded
the storm, than when the dark clouds overhung them. They had no words
of cheer to speak to each other, no courage or hope to share, but those
which pointed to a life where hunger and cold could never come, and
their benumbed faculties were scarcely able to seize upon a consolation
so remote from the thoughts and wants that absorbed their whole being.
A situation like this will not awaken in common natures religious trust.
Under such protracted suffering, the animal outgrows the spiritual
in frightful disproportion. Yet the mother's sublime faith, which had
brought her thus far through her agonies, with a heart still warm toward
those who shared them, did not fail her now. She spoke gently to one
and another; asked her husband to repeat the litany, and the children
to join her in the responses; and endeavored to fix their minds upon
the time when the relief would probably come. Nature, as unerringly as
philosophy could have done, taught her that the only hope of sustaining
those about her, was to set before them a termination to their
sufferings.
What days and nights were those that went by while they waited! Life
waning visibly in those about her; not a morsel of food to offer them;
her own infant--and the little one that had been cherished and saved
through all by the mother now dead-wasting hourly into the more perfect
image of death; her husband worn to a skeleton; it needed the fullest
measure of exalted faith, of womanly tenderness and self-sacrifice, to
sustain her through such a season. She watched by night as well as by
day. She gathered wood to keep them warm. She boiled the handful of tea
and dispensed it to them, and when she found one sunken and speechless,
she broke with her teeth a morsel of the precious sugar, and put it in
his lips. She fed her babe freely on snow-water, and scanty as was the
wardrobe she had, she managed to get fresh clothing next to its skin two
or three times a week. Where, one asks in wonder and reverence, did
she get the strength and courage for all this? She sat all night by her
family, her elbows on her knees, brooding over the meek little victim
that lay there, watching those who slept, and occasionally dozing with
a fearful consciousness of their terrible condition always upon her. The
sense of peril never slumbered. Many times during the night she went to
the sleepers to ascertain if they all still breathed. She put her hand
under their blankets, and held it before the mouth. In this way she
assured herself that they were yet alive. But once her blood curdled to
find, on approaching her hand to the lips of one of her own children,
there was no warm breath upon it. She tried to open his mouth, and found
the jaws set. She roused her husband, "Oh! Patrick, man! arise and help
me! James is dying!" "Let him die!" said the miserable father, "he will
be better off than any of us." She was terribly shocked by this reply.
In her own expressive language, her heart stood still when she heard it.
She was bewildered, and knew not where to set her weary hands to work,
but she recovered in a few moments and began to chafe the breast
and hands of the perishing boy. She broke a bit of sugar, and with
considerable effort forced it between his teeth with a few drops of
snow-water. She saw him swallow, then a slight convulsive motion stirred
his features, he stretched his limbs feebly, and in a moment more opened
his eyes and looked upon her. How fervent were her thanks to the Great
Father, whom she forgot not day or night.
Thus she went on. The tea leaves were eaten, the seeds chewed, the
sugar all dispensed. The days were bright, and compared with the nights,
comfortable. Occasionally, when the sun shone, their voices were heard,
though generally they sat or lay in a kind of stupor from which she
often found it alarmingly difficult to arouse them. When the gray
evening twilight drew its deepening curtain over the cold glittering
heavens and the icy waste, and when the famishing bodies had been
covered from the frost that pinched them with but little less keenness
than the unrelenting hunger, the solitude seemed to rend her very brain.
Her own powers faltered. But she said her prayers over many times in the
darkness as well as the light, and always with renewed trust in Him who
had not yet forsaken her, and thus she sat out her weary watch. After
the turning of the night she always sat watching for the morning star,
which seemed every time she saw it rise clear in the cold eastern sky,
to renew the promise, "As thy day is, so shall thy strength be."
Their fire had melted the snow to a considerable depth, and they were
lying on the bank above. Thus they had less of its heat than they
needed, and found some difficulty in getting the fuel she gathered
placed so it would burn. One morning after she had hailed her messenger
of promise, and the light had increased so as to render objects visible
in the distance, she looked as usual over the white expanse that lay to
the south-west, to see if any dark moving specks were visible upon its
surface. Only the tree-tops, which she had scanned so often as to be
quite familiar with their appearance, were to be seen. With a heavy
heart she brought herself back from that distant hope to consider what
was immediately about her. The fire had sunk so far away that they had
felt but little of its warmth the last two nights, and casting her
eyes down into the snow-pit, whence it sent forth only a dull glow, she
thought she saw the welcome face of beloved mother Earth. It was such
a renewing sight after their long, freezing separation from it She
immediately aroused her eldest son, John, and with a great deal of
difficulty, and repeating words of cheer and encouragement, brought him
to understand that she wished him to descend by one of the tree-tops
which had fallen in so as to make a sort of ladder, and see if they
could reach the naked earth, and if it were possible for them all to go
down. She trembled with fear at the vacant silence in which he at first
gazed at her, but at length, after she had told him a great many times,
he said "Yes, mother," and went.
He reached the bottom safely, and presently spoke to her. There was
naked, dry earth under his feet; it was warm, and he wished her to come
down. She laid her baby beside some of the sleepers, and descended.
Immediately she determined upon taking them all down. How good, she
thought, as she descended the boughs, was the God whom she trusted. By
perseverance, by entreaty, by encouragement, and with her own aid, she
got them into this snug shelter.
Relief came not, and as starvation crept closer and closer to himself
and those about him, Patrick Breen determined that it was his duty to
employ the means of sustaining life which God seemed to have placed
before them. The lives of all might be saved by resorting to such
food as others, in like circumstances, had subsisted upon. Mrs. Breen,
however, declared that she would die, and see her children die, before
her life or theirs should be preserved by such means. If ever the father
gave to the dying children, it was without her consent or knowledge. She
never tasted, nor knew of her children partaking. Mrs. Farnham says that
when Patrick Breen ascended to obtain the dreadful repast, his wife,
frozen with horror, hid her face in her hands, and could not look up.
She was conscious of his return, and of something going on about the
fire, but she could not bring herself to uncover her eyes till all had
subsided again into silence. Her husband remarked that perhaps they
were wrong in rejecting a means of sustaining life of which others had
availed themselves, but she put away the suggestion so fearfully that
it was never renewed, nor acted upon by any of her family. She and her
children were now, indeed, reaching the utmost verge of life. A little
more battle with the grim enemies that had pursued them so relentlessly,
twenty-four, or at most forty-eight hours of such warfare, and all would
be ended. The infants still breathed, but were so wasted they could only
be moved by raising them bodily with the hands. It seemed as if even
their light weight would have dragged the limbs from their bodies.
Occasionally, through the day, she ascended the tree to look out. It
was an incident now, and seemed to kindle more life than when it only
required a turn of the head or a glance of the eye to tell that there
was no living thing near them. She could no longer walk on the snow, but
she had still strength enough to crawl from tree to tree to gather a few
boughs, which she threw along before her to the pit, and piled them in
to renew the fire. The eighth day was passed. On the ninth morning she
ascended to watch for her star of mercy. Clear and bright it stood over
against her beseeching gaze, set in the light liquid blue that overflows
the pathway of the opening day. She prayed earnestly as she gazed, for
she knew that there were but few hours of life in those dearest to
her. If human aid came not that day, some eyes, that would soon look
imploringly into hers, would be closed in death before that star would
rise again. Would she herself, with all her endurance and resisting
love, live to see it? Were they at length to perish? Great God! should
it be permitted that they, who had been preserved through so much,
should die at last so miserably?
Her eyes were dim, and her sight wavering. She could not distinguish
trees from men on the snow, but had they been near, she could have heard
them, for her ear had grown so sensitive that the slightest unaccustomed
noise arrested her attention. She went below with a heavier heart than
ever before. She had not a word of hope to answer the languid, inquiring
countenances that were turned to her face, and she was conscious that
it told the story of her despair. Yet she strove with some half-insane
words to suggest that somebody would surely come to them that day.
Another would be too late, and the pity of men's hearts and the mercy
of God would surely bring them. The pallor of death seemed already to be
stealing over the sunken countenances that surrounded her, and, weak as
she was, she could remain below but a few minutes together. She felt
she could have died had she let go her resolution at any time within the
last forty-eight hours. They repeated the Litany. The responses came so
feebly that they were scarcely audible, and the protracted utterances
seemed wearisome. At last it was over, and they rested in silence.
The sun mounted high and higher in the heavens, and when the day was
three or four hours old she placed her trembling feet again upon the
ladder to look out once more. The corpses of the dead lay always before
her as she reached the top-the mother and her son, and the little
boy, whose remains she could not even glance at since they had been
mutilated. The blanket that covered them could not shut out the horror
of the sight.
The rays of the sun fell on her with a friendly warmth, but she could
not look into the light that flooded the white expanse. Her eyes lacked
strength and steadiness, and she rested herself against a tree and
endeavored to gather her wandering faculties in vain. The enfeebled
will could no longer hold rule over them. She had broken perceptions,
fragments of visions, contradictory and mixed-former mingled with latter
times. Recollections of plenty and rural peace came up from her
clear, tranquil childhood, which seemed to have been another state of
existence; flashes of her latter life-its comfort and abundance-gleams
of maternal pride in her children who had been growing up about her to
ease and independence.
She lived through all the phases which her simple life had ever worn,
in the few moments of repose after the dizzy effort of ascending; as
the thin blood left her whirling brain and returned to its shrunken
channels, she grew more clearly conscious of the terrible present, and
remembered the weary quest upon which she came. It was not the memory
of thought, it was that of love, the old tugging at the heart that had
never relaxed long enough to say, "Now I am done; I can bear no more!"
The miserable ones down there--for them her wavering life came back; at
thought of them she turned her face listlessly the way it had so often
gazed. But this time something caused it to flush as if the blood, thin
and cold as it was, would burst its vessels! What was it? Nothing
that she saw, for her eyes were quite dimmed by the sudden access of
excitement! It was the sound of voices! By a superhuman effort she kept
herself from falling! Was it reality or delusion? She must at least
live to know the truth. It came again and again. She grew calmer as
she became more assured, and the first distinct words she heard uttered
were, "There is Mrs. Breen alive yet, anyhow!" Three men were advancing
toward her. She knew that now there would be no more starving. Death
was repelled for this time from the precious little flock he had so long
threatened, and she might offer up thanksgiving unchecked by the dreads
and fears that had so long frozen her.