There was at least one dissenting opinion, but it was a woman’s and therefore not likely to carry much weight. Forty-four-year-old Tamzene Donner, George’s wife, was downcast and apprehensive. She could see nothing but folly in the notion of following a man they did not know over an unproven route. She could not shake her growing suspicion that Hastings might turn out to be, as she was later reported to have put it, merely another “selfish adventurer.”
