Birth of a Reformation; Or, The Life and Labors of Daniel S. Warner

by A. L. Byers

His return to Michigan was in time to attend the general camp-meeting, which this year was held on the new ground at Grand Junction. Before the summer was over he received an urgent call to go to the Pacific Coast and to attend the tabernacle-meeting at Los Angeles, Cal., in October. Feeling it the will of the Lord that he go he started on this journey in August. After a few meetings in Missouri, Iowa, and Kansas, he proceeded to Los Angeles, which he reached in time to attend the meeting appointed there. His first report from the Coast, written at National City, is in part as follows:

We were three days and nights making the trip, with very little stopping. We came over the Santa Fe system. We passed over much wild and mountainous scenery, but the lofty peaks called The Needles we passed at night and failed to see. Our chariot brought us over one thousand miles of desert. The awful blank was broken only by an occasional Indian camp or village, or a mining-point. For perhaps a hundred miles or more the earth was as bare as the paved streets of a city, and for many hundred miles nothing but tumbleweed had ventured life upon the dry region. But it is believed that nearly all that lifeless desert would be productive if irrigated or blessed with summer showers. One thing that broke the awful monotony of the long, weary plains was the fact that we were seldom out of sight of mountain ranges. In Arizona we reached a very high altitude. The morning found the ground covered with snow and the temperature quite cold. In eastern California we traveled for hundreds of miles in the midst of a wild mountainous scenery, much of the time running on or near the summit, giving us a grand and awful view of the mountains for a vast distance around. Finally, fertile nooks, little houses, and orchards made their welcomed appearance, which began to relieve the mind wearied with the long scene of barren emptiness. At San Barnardino everything began to look as though we had returned to the land of the living.

A few hours more through almost perpetual vineyards, lemon, orange, and fig orchards, etc., brought us into Los Angeles, and seeing our dear Bro. J. W. Byers through the window, we felt like climbing over the slow-moving people to reach the door. Oh, praise God for the privilege of greeting our dear fellow laborer in the gospel of God! We found him and family well, and he and Sister Byers wonderfully devoted to their calling, laboring day and night with unwearied zeal for the salvation of lost men and women, who are on the brink of everlasting ruin. Praise God, we soon saw that their labors have been owned and blessed of God. We found a precious and very zealous church in Los Angeles....

Truly dear Brother and Sister Byers have been working the richest mine of gold ever opened in California. Their toils have known no moderation. They have indeed, according to apostolic example, "given themselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word." And, thank God, there are those in Los Angeles who labored with their hands for the direct object of saving lost men and women, using only enough to supply nature's wants. Oh, that everybody who professes consecration of self and all to God would show it forth by a life wholly devoted to the spread of the pure gospel of Christ and the deliverance of the lost!...

His stay in California was confined to the southern part of the State, where he spent two and one half months laboring in various places. On his return he wrote from Denver and described some of the sublime scenery he witnessed on the line of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad.

Some of the most sublime scenery was passed in the night. At Glenwood Springs the train stopped an hour and a half, giving passengers a much-appreciated relief from long confinement and a very much enjoyed ramble amid the beautiful scenery of the little city, which lies in a small glen, surrounded by towering mountains on all sides. Here, for the first time in our life, we saw hot springs. The weather was cold and snow was on the ground, and the many stony springs and the great hot-water reservoir caused a steam to arise that made a person feel as if the infernal fires were not far off. A stone wall separates between two large pools, in one of which arise many cold springs, and just over the wall the hot water boils up. At this place is the junction of the Grand River and the Roaring Fork. Our line followed up the Grand River, the canyon of which was very delightful. The great red, stone mountains towered up on both sides in the form of large old castles, many of them nearly square and others oblong but with square corners like a building. Finally we left the Grand River and followed the winding course of a tributary. Now the scene became yet more wildly grand, which we greatly enjoyed.

At some time past eleven at night we reached the Royal Gorge. Having requested the porter to notify us, we lay down without undressing, and so, blessed with good starlight, we were enabled to behold one of the most sublime and awful scenes we ever witnessed in all our travels. Here the almighty hand of God had cleaved a narrow passage through the rocks, which tower up thousands of feet on either side. On our left we passed close to the base of the mighty wall; on our right only a small stream lay between our track and the awful elevation. This indescribably awful gorge extended perhaps for two or three miles. We stood upon the platform of the car, at first turning our eyes right and left, beholding with solemn wonder the vertical cliffs that seem almost to touch the stars. Finally we had but to direct our eyes straight up between the two cars and behold, by one straight upward gaze, the cliffs on both sides as their proud summits seemed to draw together. As we stood on the platform nearest the rocks we frequently saw the great peaks leaning directly over our heads. We could not refrain from crying out, Oh! oh! wonderful! wonderful! Never shall we forget that impressive sight! It seems to us that we would have but to make that trip by daylight to be satisfied that nothing more sublimely awful and inspiring need be looked for amid all the wonders of this creation of God. We would not have missed it for a great deal, and hope it may please God to let our eyes behold the same by daylight.

On the previous afternoon we passed a freight-train that had the day before been wrecked by running upon a heap of earth and rocks that had broken loose perhaps a thousand feet up the sloping mountains and, rushing down, covered the track. The engine and tender were pitched down the hill and lay upside down, under which, alas, the fireman had met his death, or rather he lay with his limbs crushed beneath the engine for over four hours and expired a short time after being taken out.

But as we went flying along under the lofty cliffs and around the short curving niches that were cut out of the solid rocks, sometimes at a height that made one feel giddy to look down, we thought how the strength of the everlasting hills is our Father's, and that his wings overshadowed us by the way. We felt no fear of harm.

His poem Good-by, Old Rockies, was written at this time. He arrived home February 16. With the portion of his report written after he had returned from his California tour we close this chapter.