Like these, and also inspired with a new and higher ideal of liberty, our fathers and mothers knew no fear, but trusting in God they crossed the river to the dark beyond, knowing that a conflict awaited them, yet feeling beforehand as only a virile faith can make man feel, that theirs would be the victory, they left their homes in the dead of winter, seeking a better home, but when or where, they knew not!
Chapter 2.
Camp on Sugar Creek.—Brigham's Charge to the Exiles.—Death of a Noble Woman.—Garden Grove.—Free from Mobs.
God pity the exiles, when storms come down—
When snow-laden clouds hang low on the ground,
When the chill blast of winter, with frost on its breath
Sweeps through the tents, like the angel of death!
When the sharp cry of child-birth is heard on the air,
And the voice of the father breaks down in his prayer,
As he pleads with Jehovah, his loved ones to spare!
My father was among the first of the Saints who left Nauvoo and the State of Illinois to avoid the storm of persecution that religious prejudice had created against us. A general gathering place had been chosen nine miles from the river, on Sugar Creek. Here an advance company of brethren had prepared for our coming by shoveling away the snow, so that we had dry spots on which to pitch our tents. Nor did we pitch camp a day too soon; for a heavy storm swept over that part of the country, leaving the snow fourteen inches deep, and being followed by a cold so intense that the Mississippi froze over, and many later teams crossed on the ice.
On the fifteenth day of February Presidents Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball joined us; and for the next two weeks a continuous stream of wagons poured into the encampment so that by the first of March over five thousand exiles were shivering behind the meager shelter of wagon covers and tents, and the winter-stripped groves that lined the Creek. Their sufferings have never been adequately told; and to realize how cruel and ill-timed was this forced exodus one has only to be reminded that in one night nine children were born under these distressing conditions.
When it is remembered that only seven years had elapsed since twelve thousand of our people had fled "naked and peeled" from the state of Missouri, and that now the entire community of twenty thousand souls were again leaving their homes unsold, it can be easily understood that they were ill prepared to endure the hardships they were thus forced to meet.
By ascending a nearby hill we could look back upon the beautiful city and see the splendid temple we had reared in our poverty at a cost of one and a half million dollars; moreover, on a clear, calm morning we could hear:
The silvery notes of the temple bell
That we loved so deep and well;
And a pang of grief would swell the heart,
And the scalding tears in anguish start
As we silently gazed on our dear old homes.