sed Circumstances into
your wiser Consideration and grant him such Help and Relief as your
Excell'c, and Honors in your Wisdom and Goodness shall deem meet, and
your memorialist as in duty bound shall ever pray.

JOHN NORTON.

Springfield, Jan. 25, 1748.

[ENDORSED]

In the House of Representatives, Feb, 23, 1748. Read and Ordered that
the sum of L37, 10s. be allowed the memorialist in consideration of this
officiating as Chaplain to the Prisoners whilst in captivity at Canada.

In council read & concurred W. Hutchinson, Speaker
J. Willard
Sec'y

Consented to

W. SHIRLEY.

* * * * *

THE MORMON CHURCH.

By Victoria Reed.

On the 24th of July, 1847, Brigham Young and a few followers pitched
their tents at the base of the Wasatch Range--a spur of the Rocky
Mountains. This was the nucleus of what is now known as the flourishing
city of Salt Lake. These pioneers came across the vast plains, over the
desolate mountains and entered the valley of the Great Salt Lake through
Emigration Canon. Their first view of the locality was from the mouth of
the canon which is at an elevation of seven hundred feet above the city,
and from this eminence the clearness of the atmosphere enabled them to
see mountain ranges ninety miles distant.

The wide valley, the broad expanse of the lake with its mountainous
islands, miles in extent, and the encircling ranges, formed an
amphitheatre of unexampled grandeur and rugged beauty. The valley itself
at that time was a vast desert without tree or shrub, nothing but the
wild sage-brush and the white alkali soil could be seen, if we except
the scrub-oaks and lebanon cedars that covered the mountain sides and
the emerald colored waters of the lake. Utah was then Mexican Territory,
and this fact, as much perhaps as any other, determined Brigham Young to
settle there. When the exodus from Nauvoo took place, the Mormons were
roughly estimated at four thousand souls and probably about that number
made the first settlement in Utah; but they have increased now to over
two hundred and fifty thousand in the United States with societies in
England, Wales and Scandinavia, all flourishing and sending yearly to
Salt Lake as many as they can find means to transport. The history of
this people will probably never be fully written, but they endured
hardships, privations, sufferings, torture and death. Their settlement
of Ut