Survival of the Bell family after twenty-one days in the mountains

“The Elko (Nevada) Independent of April 20, says a “Mormon” family named Bell, consisting of man, woman, and four children—three girls and a boy, left Duck Valley, near Mountain City, with five horses, and a few pounds of rice, for the Utah settlements, by a cut-off trail through the mountains, where they were overtaken by weather. They subsequently, after killing a horse for food, their rice having given out, arrived at Deeth, a railroad station 30 miles east of Elko. The Independent says, “Were they ordinary mortals not inured to the hardships of border life they certainly would have perished. Twenty-one days on horsemeat and rice in mid-winter is a terrible ordeal to go through, even for the strong and hardy mountaineer, but when women and children undergo it, it is a matter worthy of record. On their arrival they were healthy and well, and made no grievous complaint of the trials they had passed through. Bell says he never will be caught out of Utah when he gets there again.”— Millennial Star 32:21”