"I have visited the fortifications on the tops of those hills frequently, and the one near Bloomfield I have crossed hundreds of times, which is on the bluff of Honeyoye River, at the outlet of Honeyoye Lake.
"In that region there are many small deep lakes, and in some of them the bottom has never been found. Fish abound in them.
"The hill Cumorah is a high hill for that country, and had the appearance of a fortification or entrenchment around it. In the State of New York, probably there are hundreds of these fortifications which are now visible, and I have seen them in many other parts of the United States."
Readers of the Book of Mormon will remember that in this very region, according to that sacred record, the final battles were fought between the Nephites and Lamanites. At the hill Cumorah, the Nephites made their last stand prior to their utter extermination, A. D., 385.
Thus was Heber preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles, above the graves of the ancients of Israel, whose records with the fullness of that Gospel, and the relics of their prowess and civilization, were now "whispering from the dust."
But another scene was about to shift in his life's drama. He had planned to visit Kirtland, the bosom of the Church, and home of Joseph the Prophet.
CHAPTER V.
THE LAND OF SHINEHAH—ARRIVAL OF HEBER AND BRIGHAM IN KIRTLAND—THEIR FIRST MEETING WITH THE PROPHET—THE KIMBALLS AND YOUNGS REMOVE TO OHIO—VEXATIOUS SUITS AND MOB VIOLENCE—FALLEN ON PERILOUS TIMES.
Kirtland, at the time arrived at in our narrative, was the head-quarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The home of the Prophet of God and many of the leading Elders of Israel, it was also the spot designated by revelation where the first temple was to be built in this dispensation.
The Church, organized at Fayette, Seneca County, New York, on the 6th of April, 1830, had entered on the third year of its existence, and the Saints throughout the eastern parts had been commanded to gather westward. Kirtland and its vicinity, or "the land of Shinehah," as it is named in revelation, had been settled as a stake of Zion since early in 1831, and from there, in the summer of the same year, had gone forth a colony of Saints to purchase and occupy "the land of Zion," in the western confines of Missouri. That region was then the nation's frontier, bordering on a wilderness inhabited by wild beasts and savages, and but sparsely peopled itself by whites scarcely less ignorant and cruel.