possessed were made of the
canvas of their wagon-covers.

Many were on foot. For provisions, they had nothing except flour and
some fresh meat. It is a fact creditable to humanity, that private
soldiers, by the score, shared their own abridged rations and scanty
stock of clothing with these poor wretches, and in less than a day after
their arrival they were provided with much to make them comfortable.

On that same Sunday, the Governor made a speech to the congregation,
being introduced by Brigham Young. He reviewed the relations of the
Mormons to the Federal government; assumed that General Johnston and the
army were under his control; pledged his word that they should not
be stationed in immediate contact with the settlements; and gave
assurances, also, that no military _posse_ should be employed to arrest
a Mormon until every other means had been tried and had failed. At
the close, he invited any of their number to respond. Various persons
immediately addressed the audience in almost frantic speeches,
concerning the murder of Joseph and Hiram Smith at Carthage, the
persecution of the Saints in Missouri and Illinois, the services
rendered by the Mormon Battalion to an ungrateful country during the
Mexican War, the toils and perils of the migration to Utah, and the
character of the Federal officers who had been sent to rule the
Territory. Personal insults were heaped upon the Governor, and a scene
of the wildest confusion was the result, which was quieted with great
difficulty by Young himself. It was manifest that the mass of the
people, overconfident of their capacity to resist the troops, were not
fully prepared for the capitulation the leaders were willing to make to
save their own necks from the halter; and, at a second meeting during
the afternoon, Young yielded somewhat to the popular clamor.

All this while, a movement of a most extraordinary character was being
carried on, which had commenced before the Governor entered the Valley.
The people of the northern settlements, along the base of the Wahsatch
Mountains, including Salt Lake City, were deserting their homes,
abandoning houses, crops, and their heavier furniture, and migrating
southward. Long wagon-trains were sweeping through the city every day,
accompanied by hundreds of families, and droves of horses and cattle.
A fair estimate of the entire Mormon population of Utah is about
forty-five thousand. Of this number, ten thousand is the proportion of
t