True, their hands were grimy, their clothing tattered, and the floors were bestrewn with hair from hides and bits of broken bullock bones; but of connubial, parental, or filial inhumanity, there were no signs.
With what deep emotion those seven heroic men contemplated the conditions in camp may be gathered from [Mr. Aguilla Glover's] own notes, published in [Thornton's] work:
Feb. 19, 1847. The unhappy survivors were, in short, in a condition most deplorable, and beyond power of language to describe, or imagination to conceive.
The emigrants had not yet commenced eating the dead. Many of the sufferers had been living on bullock hides for weeks and even that sort of food was so nearly exhausted that they were about to dig up from the snow the bodies of their companions for the purpose of prolonging their wretched lives.
Thornton's work contains the following statement by a member of one of the relief corps:
On the morning of February 20,[[25]] Racine Tucker, John Rhodes, and Riley Moutrey went to the camp of [George Donner] eight miles distant, taking a little jerked beef. These sufferers (eighteen) had but one hide remaining. They had determined that upon consuming this they would dig from the snow the bodies of those who had died from starvation. Mr. Donner was helpless, [Mrs. Donner] was weak but in good health, and might have come to the settlement with this party; yet she solemnly but calmly determined to remain with her husband and perform for him the last sad offices of affection and humanity. And this she did in full view that she must necessarily perish by remaining behind. The three men returned the same day with seven refugees[[26]] from Donner Camp.
[John Baptiste Trubode] has distinct recollections of the arrival and departure of Tucker's party, and of the amount of food left by it.
He said to me in that connection:
"To each of us who had to stay in camp, one of the First Relief Party measured a teacupful of flour, two small biscuits, and thin pieces of jerked beef, each piece as long as his first finger, and as many pieces as he could encircle with that first finger and thumb brought together, end to end. This was all that could be spared, and was to last until the next party could reach us.
"Our outlook was dreary and often hopeless. I don't know what I would have done sometimes without the comforting talks and prayers of those two women, your mother and Aunt Elizabeth. Then evenings after you children went to sleep, [Mrs. George Donner] would read to me from the book[[27]] she wrote in every day. If that book had been saved, every one would know the truth of what went on in camp, and not spread these false tales.