cannibal14

On arrival, they discovered Hastings had left with another wagon train. Undaunted, James Reed led the company of nine families and sixteen single men onto the new trail. The party remained in high spirits for the first week having made the excellent time of ten to twelve miles a day. Then on August 6th a note from Hastings urged them to find an alternate route, as the way ahead was impassable. Leaving the trail, the wagons started down the canyon. Their progress through the thick brush and cottonwood trees was grueling and agonizingly slow. When they reached the Great Salt Lake, they were a month behind in the journey and eighty miles of Great Salt Desert lay ahead.
   It took the party five days to cross the desert. Wagons, foundered axle deep in a quagmire of wet salt, had to be abandoned. Oxen went mad from thirst and ran off or died. On the far side of the desert, an inventory of food was taken and found to be less than adequate for the six hundred mile trek still ahead. That night, as an ominous portent, the first snow powdered the mountain peaks.
   They reached the Humbolt River on September 26th. The diversion had cost them an extra one hundred and twenty-five miles. Nerves were shattered and fights began to break out. James Reed killed a man in self-defense and was banished from the party. He left his family and rode on to California alone.
   By October 19th a relief party loaded with extra food found the weary pioneers fifty miles from the summit and assured them that the pass wouldn�t be blocked for at least another month. They were wrong.
   October 31st , only one thousand feet from the granite peaks, on the edge of Truckee Lake, snow began to fall. The party raced to climb through the pass, but the women were too exhausted from carrying their children; the decision was made to stop for the night and cross the pass the next morning. Heavy snow continued falling. By morning the pass had been completely blocked by twenty-foot snowdrifts. The tired and hungry emigrants had arrived one day too late.
   Over the next four months, the eighty-one remaining men, women, and children huddled together in two abandoned cabins*, make shift lean-tos, and tents. The cattle had all been killed and eaten by mid-December; one man had died of malnutrition. The people began to eat bark, twigs, and boiled hides.
   In desperation, a group of nine men, five women, and a twelve year old boy packed scanty rations and on snowshoes made from oxbows and rawhide, set out to cross the pass for help. They called themselves the Forlorn Hope. Nine days later they realized they had become lost in the snow-covered mountains. Completely without food for three days and on the verge of starvation a suggestion was made to draw lots; the loser would sacrifice his life to save the others. Patrick Dolan drew the fatal slip, but no one could bring themselves to kill him. Malnutrition soon carried out what the group could not do. Two other men followed quickly. Ten members of the Forlorn Hope butchered their dead companions, then wrapped and carefully labeled the packages so no one would have to consume their relatives. The two Indians who had accompanied the group as guides refused the gruesome nourishment and vanished into the woods.
   Eighteen days after they had started from the main camp, six survivors of the Forlorn Hope stumbled to a cabin and repeated the horrendous tale of death and cannibalism. Fort Sutter was notified that there were people on Truckee Lake who needed immediate rescue, but it would be nearly a month before the first search party reached them.
   On February 19th, the rescue team found forty-eight survivors at the camp. Bodies had been spread on the snow and covered with quilts. No one at the camp had yet been forced into cannibalism, instead subsisting on boiled rawhide. The noble resolution would not last.
   It took four relief parties two months to get all the survivors out. The second relief party, led by James Reed, reported that when they arrived at the camp, �half-eaten bodies� littered the ground and the survivors �surrounded by the remains of their unholy feast, looked more like demons than human beings.� **
   Reed had been spectacularly lucky, his wife and all four children had survived the ordeal.
   All of the Donners, save one child, succumbed.
   Eighty-seven people had started over the new passage to California. Two thirds of the women and children along with one third of the men had survived. Forty-one people had died.

No one could accuse The Chinese of being squeamish about the things they eat - monkeys' brains, owls' eyes, bears' paws and deep fried scorpions are all items on The menu. But most dishes revered as national favourites sound as harmless as boiled rice when compared to the latest pint de jour allegedly gaining favour in Shenzhen - human foetus.
   Rumours that dead embryos were being used as dietary supplements started to spread early last year with reports that some doctors in Shenzhen hospitals were eating dead foetuses after carrying out abortions. The doctors allegedly defended their actions by saying the embryos were good for their skin and general health.
   A trend was set and soon reports circulated that doctors in the city were promoting foetuses as a human tonic. Hospital cleaning women were seen fighting each other to take the treasured human remains home. Last month, reporters from EastWeek - a sister publication of Eastern Express - went to Shenzhen to see if the rumours could be substantiated. On March 7, a reporter entered the state-run Shenzhen Heath Centre for Women and Children feigning illness and asked a female doctor for a foetus. The doctor said the department was out of stock but to come again.
   The next day the reporter returned at lunch time. The doctor eventually emerged from the operating theatre holding a fist size glass bottle stuffed with thumbsized foetuses.
   She said: "There are 10 foetuses here, all aborted this morning. You can take them. We are a state hospital and don't charge anything.
   "Normally, we doctors take them home to eat - all free. Since you don't look well, you can take them."
    Not every state hospital is as generous with its dead embryos as the Health Centre for Women and Children. At the Shenzhen People's Hospital, for example, the reporter was in for a surprise.
   When a Ms. Yang, the head nurse, was asked for foetuses, she looked anxious and asked other staff to leave. After closing the door, she asked the undercover buyer in a low voice: "Where did you (get to) know that we sell foetuses?"
   The reporter answered: "A doctor friend in Hong Kong told me."
   "Who? What is his/her name?"
   The reporter was not prepared for this line of questioning and could not come up with a name. Yang told him that foetuses were only for sale within the hospital, and were not for public purchase. She added that some staff would, however, sell the foetuses on to Hong Kong buyers.
   The reporter learned that the going rate for a foetus was $10 but when the merchandise was in short supply, the price could go up to $20. But these prices are pin money compared to those set by private clinics, which are said to make a fortune selling foetuses. One chap on Bong Men Lao Street charges $300 for one foetus. The person in charge of the clinic is a man in his 60's. When he saw the ailing reporter, he offered to take an order for foetuses that had reached full-term and which, it is claimed, contain the best healing properties. When a female doctor named Yang - no relation - of Sin Hua clinic was asked whether foetuses were edible, she said emphatically: "Of course they are. They are even better than placentas.
   "They can make your skin smoother, your body stronger and are good for kidneys. When I was in an army hospital in Jiangti province, I often brought foetuses home. They were pink, like little mice, with hands and feet. Normally, I buy some pork to make soup (with the foetuses added). I know they are human beings, and (eating them) feels disgusting. But at that time, it was already very popular."