The author visited this spot of melancholy history in company with the vice-president of the great railway line which here swings up so steadily and easily over the Sierras.

Bit by bit we checked out as best we might the fateful spots mentioned in the story of the Donner Party.

A splendid motor highway runs by the lakeside now.

While we halted our own car there, a motor car drove up from the westward--following that practical automobile highway which now exists from the plains of California across the Sierras and east over precisely that trail where once the weary feet of the oxen dragged the wagons of the early emigrants.

It was a small car of no expensive type.