And so the ardent young Elder was compelled to curb his spirit until the time when grass should grow and water run. Yet he was not alone in feeling this impatience for the start. Through all the settlement had thrilled a response to the Lord’s word as revealed to his servant Brigham. The God of Israel was to be with them on the march, and old and young were alike impatient.
Early in April the life began to stir more briskly in the great camp that sprawled along either side of the swollen, muddy river. From dawn to dark each day the hills echoed with the noise of many works, the streets were alive with men and women going and coming on endless errands, and with excited children playing at games inspired by the occasion. Wagons were mended and loaded with provisions and tools, oxen shod, ox-bows renewed, guns put in order, bullets moulded, and the thousand details perfected of a migration so hazardous. They were busy, noisy, excited, happy days.
At last, in the middle of April, the signs were seen to be right. Grass grew and water ran, and their part, allotted by the Lord, was to brave the dangers of that forbidding land that lay under the western sun. Then came a day of farewells and merry-making. In the afternoon, the day being mild and sunny, there was a dance in the bowery,—a great arbour made of poles and brush and wattling. Here, where the ground had been trodden firm, the age and maturity as well as the youth and beauty of Israel gathered in such poor festal array as they had been able to save from their ravaged stores.
The Twelve Apostles led off in a double cotillion, to the moving strains of a violin and horn, the lively jingle of a string of sleigh-bells, and the genial snoring of a tambourine. Then came dextrous displays in the dances of our forbears, who followed the fiddle to the Fox-chase Inn or Garden of Gray’s Ferry. There were French Fours, Copenhagen jigs, Virginia reels,—spirited figures blithely stepped. And the grave-faced, square-jawed Elders seemed as eager as the unthinking youths and maidens to throw off for the moment the burden of their cares.
From midday until the April sun dipped below the sharp skyline of the Omaha hills, the modest revel endured. Then silence was called by a grim-faced, hard-voiced Elder, who announced:
“The Lute of the Holy Ghost will now say a word of farewell from our pioneers to those who must stay behind.”
He stood before them erect, brave, confident; and the fire of his faith warmed his voice into their hearts.
“Children of Israel, we are going into the wilderness to lay the foundations of a temple to the most high God, so that when his Son, our elder Brother, shall come on earth again, He may have a place where He can lay His head and spend, not only a night or a day, but rest until He can say, ‘I am satisfied!’—a place, too, where you can obtain the ordinances of salvation for yourselves, your living, and your dead. Let your prayers go with us. We have been thrust out of Babylon, but to our eternal salvation. We care no more for persecution than for the whistle of the north wind, the croaking of the crane that flies over our heads, or the crackling of thorns under a pot. True, some of our dearest, our best-loved, have dropped by the way; they have fallen asleep, but what of that?—and who cares? It is as well to live as to die, or to die as to live—as well to sleep as to be awake. It is all one. They have only gone a little before us; and we shall soon strike hands with them across those poor, mean, empty graves back there on the forlorn prairies of Iowa. For you must let me clench this God’s truth into your minds; that you stand now in your last lot, in the end of your days when the Son of Man cometh again. Afflictions shall be sent to humble and to prove you, but oh! stand fast to your teachings so that not one of you may be lost. May sinners in Zion become afraid henceforth, and fearfulness surprise the hypocrite from this hour! And now may the favour and blessing of God be manifest upon you while we are absent from one another!”
When the fervent amens had died away they sang the farewell hymn:—
“Thrones shall totter, Babel fall,
Satan reign no more at all;
“Saints shall gain the victory,
Truth prevail o’er land and sea;
“Gentile tyrants sink to hell;
Now’s the day of Israel.”
The words of the young Elder were felt to be highly consoling; but a toast given by Brigham that night was longer talked of. It was at a farewell party at the house of Bishop Wright. On the hay-covered floor of the banquet-room, amid the lights of many candles hung from the ceiling and about the walls in their candelabra of hollowed turnips, the great man had been pleased to prophesy blessings profusely upon the assembled guests.
“I am awful proud,” he began, “of the way the Lord has favoured us. I am proud all the time of his Elders, his servants, and his handmaids. And when they do well I am prouder still. I don’t know but I’ll get so proud that I’ll be four or five times prouder than I am now. As I once said to Sidney Rigdon, our boat is an old snag boat and has never been out of Snag-harbour. But it will root up the snags, run them down, split them, and scatter them to the four quarters. Our ship is the old ship of Zion; and nothing that runs foul of her can withstand her shock and fury.”
Then had followed the toast, which was long remembered for its dauntless spirit.
“Here’s wishing that all the mobocrats of the nineteenth century were in the middle of the sea, in a stone canoe, with an iron paddle; that a shark would swallow the canoe, and the shark be thrust into the nethermost part of hell, with the door locked, the key lost, and a blind man looking for it!”
Chapter IX.
Into the Wilderness
Onto the West at last to build the house of God in the mountains. On to what Daniel Webster had lately styled “a region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie-dogs.”
The little band of pioneers chosen to break a way for the main body of the Saints consisted of a hundred and forty-three men, three women, and two children. They were to travel in seventy-three wagons, drawn by horses and oxen. They knew not where they were to stop, but they were men of eager initiative, fearless and determined; and their consolation was that, while their exodus into the desert meant hardship and grievous suffering, it also promised them freedom from Gentile interference. It was not a fat land into which they were venturing; but at least it was a land without a past, lying clean as it came from the hand of its maker, where they could be free to worship God without fearing the narrow judgment of the frivolous. Instructed in the sacred mysteries revealed to Joseph Smith through the magic light of the Urim and Thummim, and sustained by the divine message engraved on the golden plates he had dug up from the hill of Cumorah, they were now ready to feel their way across the continent and blaze a trail to the new Jerusalem.
They went in military style with due precautions against surprise by the Lamanites—the wretched red remnant of Abraham’s seed—that swarmed on every side.
Brigham Young was lieutenant-general; Stephen Markham was colonel; the redoubtable John Pack was first major, and Shadrach Roundy, second. There were two captains of hundreds and fourteen captains of tens. The orders of the lieutenant-general required each man to walk constantly beside his wagon, leaving it only by his officer’s commands. To make the force compact, the wagons were to move two abreast where they could. Every man was to keep his weapons loaded. If the gun was a caplock, the cap was to be taken off and a piece of leather put on to exclude moisture and dirt; if a flintlock, the filling was to be taken out and the pan filled with tow or cotton.
Their march was not only cautious but orderly. At five A.M. the bugle sounded for rising, two hours being allowed for prayers and breakfast. At night each man had to retire to his wagon for prayer at eight-thirty, and to rest at nine. If they camped by a river they drew the wagons into a semicircle with the river at its base. Other times the wagons made a circle, a fore-wheel of one touching a rear wheel of the next, thus providing a corral for the stock. In such manner was the