Breen called these "soap-root.") March 1847 March 1, 1847: Patrick Breen's diary: "There has 10 men arrived this morning from Bear Valley with provisions. We are to start in two or three days & Cash our goods here. There is, amongst them, some old. They say the snow will be here until June." Patty Reed and Thomas Reed are still alive when James Reed and the rest of the Second Relief reach the lake. The rescuers find the grim evidence of cannibalism at the lake camp and at Alder Creek. They leave with 17 emigrants. Three men from the rescue party stay behind at the camps to help the weakened emigrants prepare for the next relief. March 5, 1847: About this date, two of the rescuers left at the camps, Charles Stone and Charles Cady, tell Tamsen Donner they will rescue her three little girls. They take the children from Alder Creek to the Breen cabin and abandon them there with the handful of emigrants remaining at the lake camp. March 5–7, 1847: The worst storm of the season strikes. The Second Relief and their charges, caught at the top of Donner Pass, are unable to proceed and spend two days huddled around a fire they can barely keep lit. When the storm clears, most of the refugees are too weak to move. Reed and his companions take three children and leave the rest, members of the Breen, Graves, and Jacob Donner families. Three die and are cannibalized at what will become known as "Starved Camp". The Third Relief, led by William Eddy and William Foster, finds the 11 survivors five days later. One of the rescuers, John Stark, stays and takes the refugees down out of the mountains. March 7, 1847: Jacob Donner's son Lewis dies as the storm ends. Jacob's wife Elizabeth and another son, Samuel, are the only members of his family left at Alder Creek; Elizabeth dies a few days later. March 13, 1847: Eddy and Foster arrive at the lake and find that their sons, James and George, have died. Only 9 people are left alive at the camps. Tamsen Donner refuses to leave her dying husband, and the others are too weak to go. The Third Relief rescues four people, leaving four or five alive at the camps. (It is not clear whether Samuel Donner is still alive at this point.) March, 1847: Sometime