PAPSit 
GABRIEL CONROY. 
1.6 
GABRIEL CONROY.* 
BY BRET HARTE. 
CHAPTER I. 
WITHOUT. 
, Snow. Everywhere. As far as the eye 
could reach — fifty miles, looking southward 
from the highest white peak. Filling ravines 
and gulches, and dropping from the walls 
of canons in white shroud-like drifts, fashion- 
ing the dividing ridge into the likeness of z 
monstrous grave, hiding the bases of giant 
pines, and completely covering young trees 
and larches, rimming with porcelain the 
bowl-like edges of still, cold lakes, and un- 
dulating 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 ; snow- 
ing in finely granulated powder, in damp, 
spongy flakes, in thin, feathery plumes ; 
snowing from a leaden sky steadily, snowing 
fiercely, shaken out of purple-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 and 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 un- 
derbrush ; 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 of life or motion changed the fixed out- 
lines 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 nat- 
ure might have once inhabited these soli- 
tudes had long since flown to the low lands. 
* Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the 
year 1875, by Bret Harte, in the Office of the Libra- 
rian of Congress at Washington, D. C. 
There was no track or imprint ; whatever 
foot might have left its mark upon this waste, 
each succeeding snow-fall obliterated all 
trace or record. Every morning the soli- 
tude 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 has been felled at the entrance 
of the canon, and the freshly cut chips were 
but lightly covered with snow. They served 
perhaps to indicate another tree, “ blazed ” 
with an axe, 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. 
Captain Conroy’s party of emigrants are lost in 
the snow, and camped up this canon. Out of pro- 
visions and starving ! 
Left St. Jo, October 8th, 1847. 
Left Salt Lake, January 1st, 1848. 
Arrived here, March 1st, 1848. 
Lost half our stock on the Platte. 
Abandoned our wagons, February 20th. 
HELP! 
Our names are : 
Joel McCormick, Jane Brackett, 
Peter Dumphy, Gabriel Conroy, 
Paul Devarges, John Walker, 
Grace Conroy, Henry March, 
Olympia Conroy, Philip Ashley, 
Mary Dumphy. 
(Then in smaller letters, in pencil) : 
Mamie died, November 8th, Sweetwater. 
Minnie died December 1st, Echo Canon. 
Jane died January 2d, Salt Lake. 
James Brackett, lost February 3d. 
HELP!” 
The language of suffering is not apt to be 
artistic or studied, but I think that rhet- 
oric 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- whitened hand 
stiffened and pointing rigidly to the fateful 
canon like the finger of Death. 
At noon there was a lull in the storm and 
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