Transcript

GREAT SALT LAKE CITY, Dec. 4, 1856.

Another of the Hand-Cart trains arrived here last Sunday in a condition which beggars all description. Winter caught them in the mountains destitute of clothing and provisions, and had not the relief which was sent from here reached them, every one of them would have perished. As it is, out of the 500 which started, one fourth have died, and more than 100 of the remainder have lost their hands or feet from the effects of the cold. When they reached here there were not 50 in the train who could help themselves; the rest were stowed in the bottoms of the wagons which had been sent for them, ragged and filthy beyond conception; helpless and despairing they could or would not get out of the wagons to attend to the calls of nature, and if the weather had not been intensely cold it would have bred a pestilence. I never imagined such a scene. Heaven preserve me from witnessing such another. And yet The Deseret News has the effrontery to tell the world that they came through well.

It is said that there are yet hundreds of these poor deluded wretches in the mountains. A few days ago an express reached here from an ox train [Hunt and Hodgetts] which is camped on Green River. Their cattle had given out, and they were bare of provisions, being obliged to feed on their dead cattle. Some forty wagons, with provisions, have gone to their relief, to endeavor, if possible, to get them into Fort Bridges [Bridger].

Source: 1857 Scrapbook No. 6, in Historian’s Office, Historical scrapbooks 1840-1904.