And listen to how it came! After departing from Sutter's, Fremont—the leader of the mapping tour—and his men headed down to Monterey, where the Mexican Government summarily informed him that he could no longer continue his expeditions. The Mexicans now considered them military incursions due to the political climate. Rather than lay low or wait for orders, Fremont simply appeared the next day in full military regalia and dug in with only 64 men! At a fully armed fort!

They were repelled to Oregon, but not before they amply made their point and hostilities formally broke out, at which time, the snows were thawing and it was time to meet the emigrants who would surely come calling.

And so here, Dear Reader, after all the time we've passed in one another's company—here is where my story begins. You'll recall the Whiteness I mentioned earlier, "the most meaning symbol of the Christian's Deity; and yet...the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind"—the white that hangs like the salvation that is Death.

That Whiteness, I foolishly thought, had at long last begun to thaw. Again, I remind you, Dear Reader: I sing my own qualities to demonstrate that the most remarkable thing about my story is that it is mine.

† April 14, 1846

If you prefer dates that is the one at which we have arrived, for it is the date of a most perverse coincidence:

The 1846 overland migration to Oregon and California consisted of some 2,700 souls; most left from Independence, Missouri, as had I on both of my trips across the Continent. However, one had to get to Missouri first and it just so happens that on that day in mid-April, 1846, the Donner families, those of Jacob and his brother George, left Springfield, Illinois much as my family had once departed from Springfield, Massachusetts for Springfield, Ohio.

On that same day in 1846, I, too, made a departure: from California, due East for the Sweetwater River at Fort Bridger to meet them.

Of course, I was not going to meet the Donner family or any of their particular cohorts, per se, but rather to guide my reading audience over the shortcut my book had suggested and my illustrious pathfinding contemporary had actually traveled. The purpose of my trip was two-fold: not only was I naturally eager to recommend California in favor of Oregon for reasons both personal and professional—if those two could even have been separated at that moment in my life—but I also wanted to be certain of how this shortcut might be gained.

In short, Dear Reader, I risked my skin to guide.

[He slams down his tumbler.]

Do not forget that: I never said any of this would be easy and I knew that better than anyone who would have bought my book to read. I set out to see how that time could be made, the time I had felt in my lungs as I scraped the sky for air, time and time again, as I chased the setting sun to the Pacific!