The Rocky Mountain Saints/Chapter 30

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The year 1845 was dark and dreary, and full of painful interest to the Saints, with only now and then a momentary gleam of change for the better. There was no certainty in anything but trouble, and that rolled in upon them like the fury of the angry billows. The thought of a home in the Rocky Mountains, or "anywhere" away from the rest of mankind, where they could be by themselves, filled them with buoyant hope that the promises of the Prophet would yet be realized.

With unwavering fidelity they toiled on the building of the Temple, though they well knew that they were completing it only to leave it to the tender care of their enemies. Their resolution was a sublime illustration of the power of faith.

By the beginning of October the building had so far progressed that the semi-annual conference was held therein. It was a great and solemn gathering. All the dignitaries of the Church were present, and the exodus of the Saints was formally resolved upon, while proper committees were appointed for the conveyance of what real estate might find purchasers.

However much they may subsequently have been benefited by the change of locality, the abandonment of their homes and firesides was, for the time being, a severe trial of their temper. The following official letter, dated November 1st, expresses their feelings at that time:

"Continued abuses, persecutions, murders, and robberies, practiced upon us by a horde of land pirates with impunity in a Christian republic and land of liberty (while the institutions of justice have either been too ​weak to afford us protection or redress, or else they too have been remiss), have brought us to the solemn conclusion that our exit from the United States is the only alternative; . . . we then can shake the dust from our garments, . . . leaving this nation alone in her glory, while the residue of the world points the finger of scorn, till the indignation and consummation decreed makes a full end."

The High Council at Nauvoo, on the 20th of January, 1846, addressed a circular to the Church throughout the world, announcing the intended departure of the pioneers, beginning in March, for the purpose of putting in early spring crops on the way, building houses, and preparing temporary resting-places for those who were to follow. But there were rumours of an intention on the part of the Government to prevent this wholesale migration, under a plea that it was the purpose of the Mormon leaders to go to Oregon, and place themselves under the protection of the British authorities, and thus become a source of greater trouble than before.

Governor Ford admits in his history that some such rumours were encouraged, to scare," if possible, the Mormons from lingering or returning should they faint by the way. One of the agents of Brigham Young, then in the Eastern States, professed to have received some such information from one of President Polk's cabinet, and the story is still believed by the Saints.

On the 2nd of February a council of the apostles and leading elders was held in Nauvoo, to deliberate upon a speedy departure. It was then thought that on the breaking up of the ice on the Mississippi the pioneers would be able to commence their pilgrimage, and before their enemies had any knowledge of their departure they would be some distance on their journey. Captains of hundreds and of fifties had been chosen, and these were now instructed to hold themselves in readiness to move at an hour's notice.

Three days later the first company crossed the river on the ice. On the following day the main body of the Saints began to move, and during February about 1,200 wagons were transported to the Iowa shore.

The severe inclement weather soon told upon the feeble and delicate living in their wagons and tents. They fully realized ​that they were homeless exiles, and that there was no rest for them until new homes were created for them in the desert. Before moving from their first camping-ground, the elders addressed a touching petition to the Governor of Iowa, in which they pictured the situation of the Saints, and asked his Excellency's protection in passing through that Territory.

"To stay," narrate the petitioners, "is death by fire and sword; to go into banishment unprepared is death by starvation. But yet, under these heart-rending circumstances, several hundreds of us have started upon our dreary journey, and we are now encamped in Lee county, Iowa, suffering much from the intensity of the cold. Some of us also are already without food, and others have barely sufficient to last a few weeks; hundreds of others must shortly follow us in the same unhappy condition."

On the 3rd of March Brigham was chosen the leader of the migrating party, and, as all was then ready, he gave the order to march on that remarkable pilgrimage which was without parallel since Moses led the Israelites from Egypt. However vain, foolish, and superstitious may have been the faith of the Saints in the judgment of others, and however arrogant and despotic the leaders of the Mormons may have since become, their exodus from the United States westward to the then unknown desert of the Great American Basin was a sublime spectacle of devotion which the most sceptical cannot regard without profound admiration.

During the most pressing preparations for the migration from Nauvoo the Temple was not neglected. In the midst of all their troubles the artistic labour of the community was directed to its last finishing touches. There was in this a sentiment of devotion creditable to their higher thoughts. They saw clearly that the Temple in all its glory would be sacrificed, but they desired that the sacrifice should be the purest and best that they could offer, and nothing therefore was left unfinished. In the beginning of May, the Temple was thus completed and dedicated, and upon it, in the front, was placed an entablature with this inscription:

"THE HOUSE OF THE LORD,
"BUILT BY THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS.
"HOLINESS TO THE LORD."^[1]

​With the closing ceremonies in the Temple, the mission of the Saints among the Gentiles came to a close—their labour was over.

A controversy has arisen over the assertion of the Temple having been finished, which would of itself be unworthy of notice but that it involves a principle to the Mormons of some importance. All through the revelations the Mormon deity is represented as very exacting in his measures. He is always straining to accomplish something beyond the capacity of the people. It would be extremely difficult to apply to that Being the words: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light;" for he has not only demanded constant heavy sacrifices of time and labour from the Saints, but he has perpetually held over their heads threats of damnation, more like a severe taskmaster than a loving Father. Ir this instance a revelation had been given, stating that, if the Temple were not completed within seven years, the Mormons, as a Church, together with "their dead," should be rejected. In several of his early sermons in Utah, Brigham stated that the Saints had never been able to complete a Temple; and this the Reörganized Church has readily seized, and argued that, if such were the case, he and the present rulers at Salt Lake, according to the revelation commanding the Temple to be built, were, therefore, "without authority." Brigham, with his usual indifference to any previous statement, hastily asserted that the Temple at Nauvoo, "through the blessing of God, it was completed and accepted by Him." The son of Joseph Smith thus presents the case:

"It has been stated, by those whose duty it was to know, that the Temple at Nauvoo was finished—'completed as Joseph designed.' This statement is not true. In no sense can it be said truthfully that any part of the Temple at Nauvoo was completed, with the possible exception of the main assembly-room into which the front doors opened. The basement in which was the font was incomplete; the stairway to the left of the front was not relieved of the rough boards laid on the risings, on which the workmen went up and down; the upper assembly-room was not accessible, the floor ​not being laid, neither the doors hung, nor the walls plastered. Besides this, the inside ornamentation was by no means finished, even in those parts called completed. There are plenty of persons now living who were frequent visitors to the Temple, after the people who built it left Nauvoo, who will testify that the building was not completed; among them David Le Baron, who had charge of it for some time; Major L. C. Bidamon, for years proprietor of the Mansion House; Dr. Weld, of Nauvoo; Amos Davis, living near the Big Mound, on the Nauvoo and La Harpe road; George Edmunds, of Sonora, and the writer, with a host of others.

"It is further rumoured that, after the death of Joseph Smith, the plans and specifications were altered; and that such parts as were nearly completed were not so completed in accordance with the original design. Of this we cannot testify, never having seen the original drawings nor read the specifications. If the statements of various persons are to be relied on, there can be but little doubt that in one respect there was a completion; and that respect is the desecration and defilement of the Temple, by the holding of such revels and orgies therein, as were not even thought of by the 'money changers,' who made the House of God at Jerusalem a 'den of thieves,' and against whom the righteous indignation of Jesus was so signally directed."—True Latter-Day Saints' Herald, Jan. 1, 1872.

Mr. Smith would have done service to the world had he been less reserved upon "the desecration and defilement of the Temple," as he doubtless had more than vague rumour for information. It is asserted by those who had good means of knowing, that practical polygamy was not unknown in that edifice. A Mormon chief who had to conceal himself there from the officers of the law thought it "not good to be alone," and preferring the society of inhabitants of this lower world to those of "a higher sphere," very naturally chose to honour those with his society who had selected him as their "Lord."

By the middle of May, probably sixteen thousand souls had crossed the Mississippi and were wending their way through Iowa to rendezvous on the banks of the Missouri river in the neighbourhood of Council Bluffs. About a thousand of the Mormons were left in Nauvoo, mostly on account of their inability, from poverty or sickness, to undertake the journey with the main body of the people, while some others were left to dispose of property and settle the affairs of the Church.

Notwithstanding the departure of the Mormon leaders and ​the greater portion of the community from Nauvoo during the winter and spring, the anti-Mormons professed to be doubtful of the entire evacuation of the city, and threatened the remainder with expulsion. Governor Ford says:

"It was feared that the Mormons might vote for the August elections of that year, and that enough of them yet remained to control the elections in the county and perhaps in the district, for Congress. They therefore took measures to get up a new quarrel with the Mormons."

From such contemptible motives began a difficulty which ended in a three days' siege of Nauvoo, and in acts of cruelty which disgracefully stain the history of Illinois. In the month of September, under one pretext or another, the anti-Mormons, to the number of 800 men, laid siege to Nauvoo, and for several days fought against 150 of its defenders. The anti-Mormons were under the command of Thomas S. Brockman, whom the Governor describes as "a Campbellite preacher, nominally belonging to the Democratic party, a large, awkward, uncouth, ignorant semi-barbarian, ambitious of office, and bent upon acquiring notoriety." The Mormons in defence of their city admit a loss of two men and a boy killed, and three or four ​wounded. The anti-Mormons admit one of their number killed, and nine or ten not dangerously wounded. Each side, however, reported that they had killed between thirty and forty of their enemies.

Upon any authority less than that of the Governor of the State, the reader would scarcely credit the recital of the siege and the triumphal entrance of the anti-Mormons into Nauvoo.

"The constable's posse marched in with Brockman at their head, consisting of about eight hundred armed men and six or seven hundred unarmed, from motives of curiosity to see the once proud city of Nauvoo humbled and delivered up to its enemies and to the domination of a self-constituted and irresponsible power. When the posse arrived in the city, the leaders of it erected themselves into a tribunal to decide who should be forced away and who remain. Parties were despatched to search for Mormon arms and for Mormons, and to bring them to the judgment where they received their doom from the mouth of Brockman, who then sat a grim and unawed tyrant for the time. As a general rule the Mormons were ordered to leave within an hour, or two hours; and by rare grace some of them were allowed until next day; and in a few cases longer.

"The treaty specified that the Mormons only should be driven into exile. Nothing was said in it concerning the new citizens who had with the Mormons defended the city. But the posse no sooner obtained possession than they commenced expelling the new citizens. Some of them were ducked in the river, being in one or two instances actually baptized in the name of the leaders of the mob; others were forcibly driven into the ferry boats, to be taken over the river, before the bayonets of armed ruffians; and it is asserted that the houses of most of them were broken open and their property stolen during their absence. . . .

"The Mormons had been forced away from their houses unprepared for a journey. They and their women and children had been thrown houseless upon the Iowa shore, without provisions or the means of getting them, or to get to places where provisions might be obtained. It was now the height of the sickly season. Many of them were taken from sick beds, hurried into the boats and driven away by the armed ruffians now exercising the power of government. The best they could do was to erect their tents on the banks of the river and there remain to take their chances of perishing by hunger or by prevailing sickness. In this condition the sick, without shelter, food, nourishment, or medicines, died by scores. The mother watched her sick babe without hope, and when she sank under accumulated miseries, it was only to be quickly followed by her other children, now left without the least attention; for the men had scattered out over the country seeking employment and the means of living."

​A Mormon writer, well known to the Author, in a communication to the Millennial Star, gives a paragraph of his experience on the entrance of the mob into the doomed city:

"We expected that an indiscriminate massacre was commencing, and I, with some others who were sick, was carried into the tall weeds and woods, while all who could hid themselves. Many crossed the river, leaving everything behind. As night approached we returned to our shelter, but, O God! what a night to remember!

"The next morning at nine o'clock saw me, my wife, my four children, my sister-in-law, Fanny, my blind mother-in-law, all shaking with the ague in one house; only George Wardle able to do anything for us, when a band of about thirty men armed with guns and bayonets fixed, pistols in belt, the captain with a sword in his hand, and the stripes and stars flying about, marched opposite my sheltering roof; the captain called a halt and demanded the owner of the two wagons to be brought out. I was raised from my bed, led out of doors supported by my sister-in-law and the rail fence. I was then asked if those goods were mine. I replied 'They are.' The captain then stepped out to within four feet of me, pointing his sword at my throat, while four others presented their guns with their bayonets within two feet of my breast, when the captain told me, 'If you are not off from here in twenty minutes, my orders are to shoot you.' I replied, 'Shoot away, for you will only send me to heaven a few hours quicker, for you see I am not for this world many hours longer.' The captain then told me, 'If you will renounce Mormonism, you may stay here and we will protect you.' I replied, 'This is not my house; yonder is my house (pointing to it), which I built and paid for with the gold that I earned in England. I never committed the least crime in Illinois, but I am a Mormon, and, if I live, I shall follow the Twelve.' 'Then,' said the captain, 'I am sorry to see you and your sick family, but if you are not gone when I return in half an hour, my orders are to kill you and every Mormon in the place.' But oh, the awful cursing and swearing which those men did pour out! I tremble when I think of it. George and Edwin drove my wagons down to the ferry, and were searched five times for fire-arms; they took a pistol, and though they promised to return it when I got across the river, I have not seen it to this day. While on the banks of the river I crawled to the margin to bid a sister, who was going down to St. Louis, 'Good-bye,' and while there a mobber shouted out, 'Look, look, there's a skeleton bidding Death good-bye.' So you can imagine the poor, sickly condition we were in.

"On Wednesday, 23rd, while in my wagons on the Slough opposite Nauvoo, a most tremendous thunder shower passed over, which drenched everything we had; not a dry thread left to us—the bed a pool of water; my wife and sister-in-law lading it out by basinfuls, and I in a burning fever and insensible, with all my hair shorn off to cure me of my disease. Many had not a wagon or tent to shelter them from the pitiless blast. ​One case I will mention. A poor woman stood among the bushes wrapping her cloak around her three little orphan children to shield and protect them from the storm as well as she could through that terrible night, which was one continued roar of thunder and blaze of lightning, while the rain descended in torrents. The mobbers seized every person in Nauvoo that they could find, leading them to the river and throwing them in. One case I will mention. They seized Charles Lambert, led him into the river, and in the midst of cursing and swearing, one man said, 'By the Holy Saints I baptize you, by order of the Commander of the Temple,' [plunged him backward] and then said, 'The commandments must be fulfilled, and, God damn you! you must have another dip' [then threw him on his face]. They then sent him on the flat-boat across the river, with the promise that if he returned to Nauvoo they would shoot him. Such were the scenes occurring at the driving of the Saints from Nauvoo."

Colonel Thomas L. Kane,^[2] brother of Dr. Kane, the Arctic explorer, found himself on the Western frontier at the time of the Mormon exodus, and becoming intimately acquainted with the exiles in their travels, and interested in their welfare, on his return to the East he delivered a very graphic lecture upon "The situation of the Mormons," before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. It is to be regretted that space cannot be spared here to give this gentleman's narrative entire; but, as it ​is the only account that has been written of that episode of Mormon history, free extracts will be made.

Of his visit to the abandoned city and to the remnant of the Mormons in Lee county, Iowa, he says:

"A few years ago, ascending the Upper Mississippi in the autumn when its waters were low, I was compelled to travel by land past the region of the Rapids. My road lay through the Half-Breed Tract, a fine section of Iowa which the unsettled state of its land-titles had appropriated as a sanctuary for coiners, horse thieves, and other outlaws. I had left my steamer at Keokuk, at the foot of the Lower Fall, to hire a carriage, and to contend for some fragments of a dirty meal with the swarming flies, the only scavengers of the locality. From this place to where the deep water of the river returns, my eye wearied to see everywhere sordid, vagabond, and idle settlers; and a country marred, without being improved, by their careless hands.

"I was descending the last hill-side upon my journey, when a landscape in delightful contrast broke upon my view. Half encircled by a bend of the river, a beautiful city lay glittering in the fresh morning sun; its bright new dwellings, set in cool green gardens, ranging up around a stately dome-shaped. hill, which was crowned by a noble marble edifice, whose high tapering spire was radiant with white and gold. The city appeared to cover several miles; and beyond it, in the background, there rolled off a fair country, chequered by the careful lines of fruitful husbandry. The unmistakable marks of industry, enterprise, and educated wealth everywhere, made the scene one of singular and most striking beauty.

"It was a natural impulse to visit this inviting region. I procured a skiff, and rowing across the river, landed at the chief wharf of the city. No one met me there. I looked, and saw no one. I could hear no one move; though the quiet everywhere was such that I heard the flies buzz, and the water-ripples break against the shallow of the beach. I walked through the solitary streets. The town lay as in a dream, under some deadening spell of loneliness, from which I almost feared to wake it; for plainly it had not slept long. There was no grass growing up in the paved ways; rains had not entirely washed away the prints of dusty footsteps.

"Yet I went about unchecked. I went into empty workshops, ropewalks, and smithies. The spinner's wheel was idle; the carpenter had gone from his work-bench and shavings, his unfinished sash and casing. Fresh bark was in the tanner's vat, and the fresh-chopped lightwood stood piled against the baker's oven. The blacksmith's shop was cold; but his coal heap, and ladling pool, and crooked water-horn, were all there as if he had just gone off for a holiday. No work-people anywhere looked to know my errand. If I went into the gardens, clinking the wicket-latch loudly after me, to pull the marygolds, heart's-ease, and lady-slippers, and draw a drink with the water-sodden well-bucket and its noisy chain; or, ​knocking off with my stick the tall heavy-headed dahlias and sun-flowers, hunted over the beds for cucumbers and love-apples—no one called out to me from any opened window, or dog sprang forward to bark an alarm. I could have supposed the people hidden in the houses, but the doors were unfastened; and when at last I timidly entered them, I found dead ashes white upon the hearths, and had to tread a-tiptoe, as if walking down the aisle of a country church, to avoid rousing irreverent echoes from the naked floors.

"On the outskirts of the town was the city graveyard; but there was no record of plague there, nor did it in anywise differ much from other Protestant American cemeteries. Some of the mounds were not long sodded; some of the stones were newly set, their dates recent, and their black inscriptions glossy in the mason's hardly dried lettering ink. Beyond the graveyard, out in the fields, I saw in one spot, hard by where the fruited boughs of a young orchard had been roughly torn down, the still smouldering remains of a barbecue fire, that had been constructed of rails from the fencing round it. It was the latest sign of life there. Fields upon fields of heavy-headed yellow grain lay rotting ungathered upon the ground. No one was at hand to take in their rich harvest. As far as the eye could reach, they stretched away—they sleeping too in the hazy air of autumn.

"Only two portions of the city seemed to suggest the import of this mysterious solitude. On the southern suburb, the houses looking out upon the country showed, by their splintered wood-work, and walls battered to the foundation, that they had lately been the mark of a destructive cannonade. And in and around the splendid Temple, which had been the chief object of my admiration, armed men were barracked, surrounded by their stacks of musketry and pieces of heavy ordnance. These challenged me to render an account of myself, and why I had had the temerity to cross the water without a written permit from a leader of their band.

"Though these men were generally more or less under the influence of ardent spirits, after I had explained myself as a passing stranger, they seemed anxious to gain my good opinion. They told the story of the Dead City: that it had been a notable manufacturing and commercial mart, sheltering over 20,000 persons; that they had waged war with its inhabitants for several years, and had been finally successful only a few days before my visit, in an action fought in front of the ruined suburb; after which they had driven them forth at the point of the sword. The defence, they said, had been obstinate, but gave way on the third day's bombardment. They boasted greatly of their prowess, especially in this battle, as they called it; but I discovered they were not of one mind as to certain of the exploits that had distinguished it; one of which, as I remember, was, that they had slain a father and his son, a boy of fifteen, not long residents of the fated city, whom they admitted to have borne a character without reproach.

​"They also conducted me inside the massive sculptured walls of the curious Temple, in which they said the banished inhabitants were accustomed to celebrate the mystic rites of an unhallowed worship. They particularly pointed out to me certain features of the building, which, having been the peculiar objects of a former superstitious regard, they had, as matter of duty, sedulously defiled and defaced. The reputed sites of certain shrines they had thus particularly noticed; and various sheltered chambers, in one of which was a deep well, constructed, they believed, with a dreadful design. Besides these, they led me to see a large and deep chiselled marble vase or basin, supported upon twelve oxen, also of marble, and of the size of life, of which they told some romantic stories. They said the deluded persons, most of whom were emigrants from a great distance, believed their Deity countenanced their reception here of a baptism of regeneration, as proxies for whomsoever they held in warm affection in the countries from which they had come. That here parents' went into the water' for their lost children, children for their parents, widows for their spouses, and young persons for their lovers; that thus the Great Vase came to be for them associated with all dear and distant memories, and was therefore the object, of all others in the building, to which they attached the greatest degree of idolatrous affection. On this account, the victors had so diligently desecrated it, as to render the apartment in which it was contained too noisome to abide in.

"They permitted me also to ascend into the steeple to see where it had been lightning-struck on the Sabbath before; and to look out east and south, on wasted farms like those I had seen near the city, extending till they were lost in the distance. Here, in the face of the pure day, close to the scar of the Divine wrath left by the thunderbolt, were fragments of food, cruises of liquor, and broken drinking vessels, with a brass drum and a steamboat signal-bell, of which I afterwards learned the use with pain.

"It was after nightfall when I was ready to cross the river on my return. The wind had freshened since the sunset, and the water beating roughly into my little boat, I hedged higher up the stream than the point I had left in the morning, and landed where a faint glimmering light invited me to steer.

"Here, among the dock and rushes, sheltered only by the darkness, without roof between them and sky, I came upon a crowd of several hundred human creatures, whom my movements roused from uneasy slumber upon the ground.

Passing these on my way to the light, I found it came from a tallow candle in a paper funnel shade, such as is used by street venders of apples and peanuts, and which, flaming and guttering away in the bleak air off the water, shone flickeringly on the emaciated features of a man in the last stage of a bilious remittent fever. They had done their best for him. Over his head was something like a tent, made of a sheet or two, and he rested on a but partially ripped open old straw mattress, with a hair sofa​cushion under his head for a pillow. His gaping jaw and glazing eye told how short a time he would monopolize these luxuries; though a seemingly bewildered and excited person, who might have been his wife, seemed to find hope in occasionally forcing him to swallow awkwardly sips of the tepid river-water, from a burned and battered, bitter-smelling, tin coffee-pot. Those who knew better had furnished the apothecary he needed; a toothless old bald-head, whose manner had the repulsive dullness of a man familiar with death-scenes. He, so long as I remained, mumbled in his patient's ear a monotonous and melancholy prayer, between the pauses of which I heard the hiccup and sobbing of two little girls, who were sitting up on a piece of drift-wood outside.

"Dreadful, indeed, was the suffering of these forsaken beings; bowed and cramped by cold and sunburn, alternating as each weary day and night dragged on, they were, almost all of them, the crippled victims of disease. They were there because they had no homes, nor hospital, nor poor-house, nor friends to offer them any. They could not satisfy the feeble cravings of their sick; they had not bread to quiet the fractious hunger-cries of their children. Mothers and babes, daughters and grandparents, all of them alike, were bivouacked in tatters, wanting even covering to comfort those whom the sick shiver of fever was searching to the marrow.

"These were Mormons in Lee county, Iowa, in the fourth week of the month of September, in the year of our Lord 1846. The city—it was Nauvoo, Illinois. The Mormons were the owners of that city, and the smiling country around. And those who had stopped their plows, who had silenced their hammers, their axes, their shuttles, and their workshop wheels; those who had put out their fires, who had eaten their food, spoiled their orchards, and trampled under foot their thousands of acres of unharvested bread—these were the keepers of their dwellings, the carousers in their Temple, whose drunken riot insulted the ears of the dying.

"I think it was as I turned from the wretched night-watch of which I have spoken, that I first listened to the sounds of revel of a party of the guard within the city. Above the distant hum of the voices of many, occasionally rose distinct the loud oath-tainted exclamation, and the falsely intonated scrap of vulgar song: but lest this requiem should go unheeded, every now and then, when their boisterous orgies strove to attain a sort of ecstatic climax, a cruel spirit of insulting frolic carried some of them up into the high belfry of the Temple steeple, and there, with the wicked childishness of inebriates, they whooped, and shrieked, and beat the drum that I had seen, and rang in charivaric unison their loud-tongued steamboat bell.

"They were, all told, not more than six hundred and forty persons who were thus lying on the river flats. But the Mormons in Nauvoo and its dependencies had been numbered the year before at over twenty thousand. Where were they? They had last been seen, carrying in mournful ​train their sick and wounded, halt and blind, to disappear behind the western horizon, pursuing the phantom of another home. Hardly anything else was known of them; and people asked with curiosity, 'What had been their fate—what their fortunes?' . . .

"They began their march in mid-winter; and by the beginning of February nearly all of them were on the road, many of the wagons having crossed the Mississippi on the ice.

"Under the most favouring circumstances, an expedition of this sort, undertaken at such a season of the year, could scarcely fail to be disastrous. But the pioneer company had set out in haste, and were very imperfectly supplied with necessaries. The cold was intense. They moved. in the teeth of keen-edged northwest winds, such as sweep down the Iowa. peninsula from the ice-bound regions of the timber-shaded Slave Lake and Lake of the Woods; on the Bald Prairie there, nothing above the dead grass breaks their free course over the hard rolled hills. Even along the scattered water-courses, where they broke the thick ice to give their cattle drink, the annual autumn fires had left little wood of value. The party, therefore, often wanted for good camp-fires, the first luxury of all travellers; but to men insufficiently furnished with tents and other appliances of shelter, almost an essential to life. After days of fatigue, their nights were often passed in restless efforts to save themselves from freezing. Their stock of food, also, proved inadequate; and as their systems became impoverished, their suffering from cold increased.

"Sickened with catarrhal affections, manacled by the fetters of dreadfully acute rheumatism, some contrived for a while to get over the shortening day's march, and drag along some others. But the sign of an impaired circulation soon began to show itself in the liability of all to be dreadfully frost-bitten. The hardiest and strongest became helplessly crippled. About the same time, the strength of their beasts of draught began to fail. The small supply of provender they could carry with them had given out. The winter-bleached prairie straw proved devoid of nourishment; and they could only keep them from starving by seeking for the browse, as it is called, a green bark and tender buds, and branches of the cotton-wood, and other stinted growths of the hollows.

"The spring came at last. It overtook them in the Sac and Fox country, still on the naked prairie, not yet half way over the trail they were following between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. But it brought its own share of troubles with it. The months with which it opened proved nearly as trying as the worst of winter.

"The snow and sleet and rain which fell, as it appeared to them, without intermission, made the road over the rich prairie soil as impassable as one vast bog of heavy black mud. Sometimes they would fasten the horses and oxen of four or five wagons to one, and attempt to get a-head in this way, taking turns; but at the close of a day of hard toil for themselves and their cattle, they would find themselves a quarter or half a mile from the place they left in the morning. The heavy rains raised ​all the water-courses: the most trifling streams were impassable. Wood fit for bridging was often not to be had, and in such cases the only resource was to halt for the freshets to subside—a matter in the case of the headwaters of the Chariton, for instance, of over three weeks' delay.

"The frequent burials made the hardiest sicken. On the soldier's march it is matter of discipline, that after the rattle of musketry over his comrade's grave, he shall tramp it to the music of some careless tune in a lively quick-step. But, in the Mormon camp, the companion who lay ill and gave up the ghost within view of all, all saw as he stretched a corpse, and all attended to his last resting-place. It was a sorrow, too, of itself to simple-hearted people, the deficient pomps of their imperfect style of funeral. The general hopefulness of human—including Mormon—nature, was well illustrated by the fact, that the most provident were found unfurnished with undertaker's articles; so that bereaved affection was driven to the most melancholy makeshifts.

"The best expedient generally was to cut down a log of some eight or nine feet long, and slitting it longitudinally, strip off its dark bark in two half cylinders. These, placed around the body of the deceased and bound firmly together with withes made of the alburnum, formed a rough sort of tubular coffin which surviving relations and friends, with a little show of black crape, could follow with its enclosure to the hole, or bit of ditch, dug to receive it in the wet ground of the prairie. They grieved to lower it down so poorly clad, and in such an unheeded grave. It was hard—was it right, thus hurriedly to plunge it in one of the undistinguishable waves of the great land-sea, and leave it behind them there, under the cold north rain, abandoned to be forgotten? They had no tombstones; nor could they find rocks to pile the monumental cairn. So, when they had filled up the grave, and over it prayed a miserère prayer, and tried to sing a hopeful psalm, their last office was to seek out landmarks, or call in the surveyor to help them to determine the bearings of valley bends, head-lands, or fork and angles of constant streams, by which its position should in the future be remembered and recognized. The name of the beloved person, his age, the date of his death, and these marks were all registered with care. This party was then ready to move on. Such graves mark all the line of the first year of the Mormon travel—dispiriting milestones to failing stragglers in the rear."

Under the difficulties of such travel and the labours performed in making settlements on the way, the pioneers and first companies did not advance further than the Missouri river in 1846.