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 du