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Show Aaron Jackson Page 4. fifty lives were lost from cold and starvation as that company of inexperience) I English peopie unused to the wilderness tried to make their way through deep / / snow over the Rockies by way of the Sweetwater and Southpass. "The men became so weak and so few remained that they could not put \ \. ~ \ up the tents. My mother related that one night when it was bitterly cold she was too weak to find wood or make a fire. Sitting by the cart on a stone she clasped her three little children to her and sheltered them with her shawl as best she could. Holding me on her lap with my sisters at her side she remained that way al~ night, a widow, cold and hungry in a strange land. While the wolves howled and sharp wind chilled the heart the poor travellers somehow I I manag::nt:c:::ro:g;:::h A, Young, ~niel Jones and Abel Garr galloped -~ I into camp from Salt Lake City am.i d the cheers and tears of the sufferers. I They brought news that relief was coming and that Brigham Young had ordered I wagons to come to our aid from'Utah. The next day we started up the Sweetwater. On October 31, at Greasewood creek-George D. Grand, R. F. Burton, Charles Decker, Chauncey G. Webb and others with six wagons of flour from Salt Lake met our company. "On November 1, we got to the briage of the Sweetwater five miles from Devil's Gate,~yoming . ... here was a foot and half of snow on the ground. The t r avellers had to scrape i t away from the ground wi th cooking utinsels in order to make a place to camp. \ "At Devi l's Gate we left Daniel W. Jor:es, Thomas M. Alexander, and Ben \ Hamilton and 17 others to guard a cache of freight we left t here. Several days after t hat we came to the last crossing of t he Sweetwater. The wat er was two feet deep and there was t hree or four i nches of i ce. ahen the people and carts tried to cross the ice broke, plungi ng them i nto the rold water, the jagged pieces of ice cut their l egs and feet and many of them left blood on the snow and bore the scares to their death. |
