s majority, and have never faltered in their
devotion to him from that day to this. Brigham had forecast--a quality
which no other prominent Mormon has probably ever possessed.
He recognized that it was better to move to the wilderness than be moved.
By his command the people gathered together their meagre effects, turned
their backs upon their homes, and their faces toward the wilderness, and
on a bitter night in February filed in sorrowful procession across the
frozen Mississippi, lighted on their way by the glare from their burning
temple, whose sacred furniture their own hands had fired! They camped,
several days afterward, on the western verge of Iowa, and poverty, want,
hunger, cold, sickness, grief and persecution did their work, and many
succumbed and died--martyrs, fair and true, whatever else they might have
been. Two years the remnant remained there, while Brigham and a small
party crossed the country and founded Great Salt Lake City, purposely
choosing a land which was outside the ownership and jurisdiction of the
hated American nation. Note that. This was in 1847. Brigham moved his
people there and got them settled just in time to see disaster fall
again. For the war closed and Mexico ceded Brigham's refuge to the
enemy--the United States! In 1849 the Mormons organized a "free and
independent" government and erected the "State of Deseret," with Brigham
Young as its head. But the very next year Congress deliberately snubbed
it and created the "Territory of Utah" out of the same accumulation of
mountains, sage-brush, alkali and general desolation,--but made Brigham
Governor of it. Then for years the enormous migration across the plains
to California poured through the land of the Mormons and yet the church
remained staunch and true to its lord and master. Neither hunger,
thirst, poverty, grief, hatred, contempt, nor persecution could drive the
Mormons from their faith or their allegiance; and even the thirst for
gold, which gleaned the flower of the youth and strength of many nations
was not able to entice them! That was the final test. An experiment
that could survive that was an experiment with some substance to it
somewhere.

Great Salt Lake City throve finely, and so did Utah. One of the last
things which Brigham Young had done before leaving Iowa, was to appear in
the pulpit dressed to personate the worshipped and lamented prophet
Smith, and confer the prophetic succession, with all its dign