Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1875 — A Snow-Storm in the Sierras. [ARTICLE]

A Snow-Storm in the Sierras.

In his serial story begun in Scribner for November Bret Harte gives the following vivid description of a snow-storm in thy Sierras: Snow. Everywhere. As far as the eye could reachr-nfty miles, looking southward from the highest white peak. Filling ravines and gulches, and dropping from the walls of canons in white, shroudlike drifts, fashioning the dividing ridge into the likeness of a monstruous grave, hiding the bases of giant pines) and completely covering young trees and larches, rimming with norcelajp the bowl-like edges of still, cold lakes, and undulating in motionless white billows to the edge of the distant horizon. Snow lying everywhere over the California Sierras on the 15th day of March, 1848, and still falling. It had been snowing for ten days; snowing in finely-granulated powder, in damp, spongy flakes, in thin, feathery plumes; snowing from a leaden skysteadily, snowing fiercely, shaken out ofpurple-black clouds in white, flocculent masses, or dropping in long, level lines like white lances from the tumbled and broken heavens. But always silently! The woods were so choked with it, the branches were so laden with it, it had so permeated, filled and possessed earth and sky; it had so cushioned and muffled the ringing rocks ami echoing hills that all sound was deadened. The strongest gust, the fiercest blast awoke no sigh or complaint from the snow-packed, rigid files of forest. There was no cracking of bough nor crackle of underbrush;- the overladen branches of pine and fir yielded and gave way without a sound. The silence was vast, measureless, complete! Nor could it be said that any outward sign ot life or motion changed the fixed outlines of this stricken landscape. Above, there was no play of light and shadow, only the occasional deepening of storm or night. Below, no bird winged its flight across the white expanse, no beast haunted the confines of the black woods; whatever of brute nature might have once inhabited these solitudes had long since flown to the low lands. There was no track or imprint; whatever foot might hove left its mark upon this waste, each succeeding snow-fall obliterated all trace or record. Every morning- the solitude was virgin and unbroken; a million tiny feet had stepped into the track and filled it up. And yet, in the center of this desolation, in the very stronghold of this grim- fortress, there was the mark of human toil. A few trees had been felled at the entrance of the canon, and the freshly-cut chips were but lightly covered with snow. They 7 served perhaps to indicate another tree.- “ blazed” with an ax, and bearing a rudely-shaped wooden effigy of a human hand, pointing to the canon. Below the hand was a square strip of canvas, securely nailed against the bark, and bearing the following inscription: ,

NOTICE. Capt. Conroy’s party of emigrants are lost in the snow and camped up this canon. Out of provisions and starving! Left St. Jo, Oet. 8,1847. Left Salt Lake Jan. 1,1848. Arrived here March 1,1848. Lost half our stock on the Platte. Abandoned our wagons Feb. 20. HELP! Our names are: Joel McCormick, Jane Brackett, Peter Dumphy, Gabriel Conroy, • Paul Devarges, John Walker, a Grace Conroy, Henry March, Olympia Conroy, Philip Ashley/ Mary Dumphy. (Then in smaller letters, in pencil): Mamie died Nov. 8, Sweetwater. Minnie died Dec, 1, Echo Canon. .i_ Jane died Jan. 2, Salt Lake. James Brackett, lost Feb. 3. HELP! The language of suffering is not apt to be artistic or studied, but I think that rhetoric could not improve this actual record. So I let it stand even as it stood this 15th day of (March, 1848, half-hidden by a thin film of damp snow, the snow-whit-ened hand stiffened and pointing rigidly to the fateful canon like the finger of Death.