On my return to the Mountain Meadows, I found my family out of flour, and the roads blocked with snow, so that a team could not get in nor out of the Meadows. I had left my family with plenty of food, but they had lent it to their neighbors. I was under the necessity of hauling both fuel and flour for them on a hand sled.
CHAPTER XII
It was nearly two years before we made another trip to the Moqui towns. Many of the brethren appeared to think that no good could be accomplished in that direction. In the autumn of 1861, many Saints were called from the north to form settlements in Southern Utah. The city of St. George was founded, and settlements were extended, so as to occupy the fertile spots along the waters of the Rio Virgen and Santa Clara.
During the winter of 1861-2 there was an unusual amount of rain-fall. About the middle of February, it rained most of the time for a number of days, and the Santa Clara Creek rose so high that the water spread across the bottom from bluff to bluff, and became a turbulent muddy river.
Our little farms and the cottonwood trees that grew on the bottom lands were disappearing. The flood wood sometimes accumulated in a pile, and would throw the current of water on to ground which had apparently before been safe from its inroads.
Our fort, constructed of stone, and which was one hundred feet square, with walls twelve feet high and two feet thick, stood a considerable distance north of the original bed of the creek. Inside the walls were rooms occupied by families, and we had considered it safe from the flood.
One night, when most of the people were asleep, some one discovered that the water was washing away the bank on the south side of it, and also that the water was beginning to run around it, between it and the bluff. It was raining heavily at the same time.
The people were removed from the fort as soon as possible, and some temporary shelter was constructed of boards, blankets, etc.
While I was making an effort to save some property near the caving bank of the stream, the ground on which I stood suddenly slid into the water, about twenty feet below, and took me with it.