[1] I fear I must task the incredulous reader's further patience by calling attention to what may perhaps prove the most literal and thoroughly-attested fact of this otherwise fanciful chronicle. The condition and situation of the ill-famed "Donner Party"—then an unknown, unheralded cavalcade of emigrants—starving in an unfrequented pass of the Sierras, was first made known to Captain Yount of Napa, in a dream. The Spanish records of California show that the relief party which succoured the survivors was projected upon this spiritual information.