The next day the company reached Summit Valley. An incident of this day's travel illustrates the exhausted condition of the members of the Donner Party. John Denton, an Englishman, was missed when camp was pitched, and John Rhodes returned and found him fast asleep upon the snow. He had become so weary that he yielded to a slumber that would soon have proven fatal. With much labor and exertion he was aroused and brought to camp. Denton appreciated the kindness, but at the same time declared that it would be impossible for him to travel another day. Sure enough, after journeying a little way on the following morning, his strength utterly gave way. His companions built a fire for him, gave him such food as they were able, and at his earnest request continued their sorrowful march. If another relief came soon, he would, perhaps, be rescued. Denton was well educated and of good family, was a gunsmith by trade, and was skilled in metals. It is related, that while in the Reed cabin, he discovered in the earth, ashes, and burnt stones in the fireplace, some small pieces of yellowish metal, which he declared to be gold. These he made into a small lump, which he carefully preserved until he left the lake, and it was doubtless lost on the mountains at his death. This was in the spring of 1847, before the discovery of gold in California. The strange little metallic lump was exhibited to several who are yet living, and who think there is reason for believing it was really gold. A few years before the construction of the Central Pacific, Knoxville, about ten miles south of Donner Lake, and Elizabethtown, some six miles from Truckee, were famous mining camps. Gold never has been found on the very shore of Donner Lake, but should the discovery be made, and especially should gold be found in the rocks or earth near the Reed cabin, there would be reason to believe that this poor unfortunate man was in reality the first discoverer of the precious metal in California. Left alone in the snow-mantled forests of the Sierra, what were this man's emotions? In the California Star of 1847, a bound volume of which is in the State Library in Sacramento, appears the following poem. The second relief party found it written on the leaf of a memorandum book by the side of Denton's lifeless body. The pencil with which it was written lay also by the side of the unfortunate man. Ere the lethargy of death stole away his senses, John Denton's thoughts had been of his boyhood's beautiful home in merry England. These thoughts were woven into verse. Are they not strangely pathetic and beautiful? Judge Thornton, in 1849, published them with the following prefatory words: "When the circumstances are considered in connection with the calamities in which the unhappy Denton was involved, the whole compass of American and English poetry may be challenged to furnish a more exquisitely beautiful, a more touching and pathetic piece. Simple and intimate to the last degree, yet coming from the heart, it goes to the heart. Its lines are the last plaintive notes which wintry winds have wakened from an Lolian harp, the strings of which rude hands have sundered. Bring before your mind the picture of an amiable young man who has wandered far from the paternal roof, is stricken by famine, and left by his almost equally unhappy companions to perish among the terrible snows of the great Sierra Nevada. He knows that his last, most solemn hour is near. Reason still maintains her empire, and memory, faithful to the last, performs her functions. On every side extends a boundless waste of trackless snow. He reclines against a bank of it, to rise no more, and busy memory brings before him a thousand images of past beauty and pleasure, and of scenes he will never revisit. A mother's image presents itself to his mind, tender recollections crowd upon his heart, and the scenes of his boyhood and youth pass in review before him with an unwonted vividness. The hymns of praise and thanksgiving that in harmony swelled from the domestic circle around the family altar are remembered, and soothe the sorrows of the dying man, and finally, just before he expires, he writes:"