ney, and the tribute offered to memory in a coarse and rudely-carved inscription on a narrow strip of board or on a stone, with other graves which offered no such testimonial of affection, furnish ample and melancholy proofs that death had considerably thinned their ranks. By such disasters thousands of emigrants have found themselves suddenly arrested, and been mocked in the flattering hope of wealth and pleasure.
The countless fragments of conveyances, the heaps of provisions, tools of every kind, and other objects with which the emigrants must have provided themselves at great expense, but which the most impatient, eager to outstrip others in the Western. Eldorado, had forsaken and cast aside, testify to that bold recklessness with which they hazard everything in this enterprise which has proved fatal to thousands. The picture traced by Thornton" in his journal of 1848, is the most shocking that can be contemplated. Arrived in the arid lands of California, the famine had at first reduced them to eating their horses and mules; soon they had recourse to dead bodies; then the dying were not spared, and at last they actually devoured each other! What a salutary proof of the uncertainty that accompanies the grandest perspectives in the life of man, and of the deceptions that unveil to him his native weakness 1
We followed the great road south of the Platte to the foot of the Black Hills. On this road we found ourselves relieved from these obstacles which had so often endangered our vehicles and our animals. After eight days' journey along the Platte, we arrived at Fort Laramie without the least trouble or accident. The commander of the fort informed us that the Great Council was to take place at the mouth of Horse river, in a vast plain situated nearly thirtyfive miles lower down on the Platte. The next day I accepted the polite invitation of the respected Colonel [Rob
12 J. Quinn Thornton, Oregon and California in 1848. N. Y., 1848, 2 VOls.
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