All this time the leaders of the expedition had no definite view of their final stopping-place. Whenever Young was asked by any of his party, as they trudged along, what locality they were aiming for, his only reply was that he would recognize the site of their new home when he saw it, and that they would surely go on as the Lord would direct them.*
* Erastus Snow's "Address to the Pioneers," 1880.
While they were camping near South Pass, an incident occurred which narrowly escaped changing the plans of the Lord, if he had already selected Salt Lake Valley. One of the men whom the company met there was a voyager whose judgment about a desirable site for a settlement naturally seemed worthy of consideration. This was T. L. Smith, better known as "Pegleg" Smith. He had been a companion of Jedediah S. Smith, one of Ashley's company of trappers, who had started from Great Salt Lake in August, 1826, and made his way to San Gabriel Mission in California, and thence eastward, reaching the Lake again in the spring of 1827. "Pegleg" had a trading post on Bear River above Soda Springs (in the present Idaho). He gave the Mormons a great deal of information about all the valley which lay before them, and to the north and south. "He earnestly advised us," says Erastus Snow, "to direct our course northwestward from Bridger, and make our way into Cache Valley; and he so far made an impression upon the camp that we were induced to enter into an engagement with him to meet us at a certain time and place two weeks afterward, to pilot our company into that country. But for some reason, which to this day never to my knowledge has been explained, he failed to meet us; and I have ever recognized his failure to do so as a providence of an all-wise God."*
* "Address to the Pioneers," 1880.
"Pegleg's" reputation was as bad as that of any of those reckless trappers of his day, and perhaps, if the Mormons had known more about him, they would have given less heed to his advice, and counted less on his keeping his engagement.
With the returning Oregonians they also made the acquaintance of Major Harris, an old trapper and hunter in California and Oregon, who gave them little encouragement about Salt Lake Valley, as a place of settlement, principally because of the lack of timber. Two days later they met Colonel James Bridger, an authority on that part of the country, whose "fort" was widely known. Young told him that he proposed to take a look at Great Salt Lake Valley with a view to its settlement. Bridger affirmed that his experiments had more than convinced him that corn would not grow in those mountains, and, when Young expressed doubts about this, he offered to give the Mormon President $1000 for the first ear raised in that valley. Next they met a mountaineer named Goodyear, who had passed the last winter on the site of what is now Ogden, Utah, where he had tried without success to raise a little grain and a few vegetables. He told of severe cold in winter and drought in summer. Irrigation had not suggested itself to a man who had a large part of a continent in which to look for a more congenial farm site.
Mormons in all later years have said that they were guided to the Salt Lake Valley in fulfilment of the prediction of Joseph Smith that they would have to flee to the Rocky Mountains. But in their progress across the plains the leaders of the pioneers were not indifferent to any advice that came in their way, and in a manuscript "History of Brigham Young" (1847), quoted by H. H. Bancroft, is the following entry, which may indicate the first suggestion that turned their attention from "California" to Utah: "On the 15th of June met James H. Grieve, William Tucker, James Woodrie, James Bouvoir, and six other Frenchmen, from whom we learned that Mr. Bridger was located about three hundred miles west, that the mountaineers could ride to Salt Lake from Fort Bridger in two days, and that the Utah country was beautiful." *
* Bancroft's "History of Utah," p. 257.
The pioneers resumed their march on June 29, over a desolate country, travelling seventeen miles without finding grass or water, until they made their night camp on the Big Sandy. There they encountered clouds of mosquitoes, which made more than one subsequent camping-place very uncomfortable. A march of eight miles the next morning brought them to Green River. Finding this stream 180 yards wide, and deep and swift, they stopped long enough to make two rafts, on which they successfully ferried over all their wagons without unloading them.
At this point the pioneers met a brother Mormon who had made the journey to California round the Horn, and had started east from there to meet the overland travellers. He had an interesting story to tell, the points of which, in brief, were as follows:—A conference of Mormons, held in New York City on November 12, 1845, resolved to move in a body to the new home of the Saints. This emigration scheme was placed in charge of Samuel Brannan, a native of Maine, and an elder in the church, who was then editing the New York Prophet, and preaching there. Why so important a project was confided to Brannan seems a mystery, in view of P. P. Pratt's statement that, as early as the previous January, he had discovered that Brannan was among certain elders who "had been corrupting the Saints by introducing among them all manner of false doctrines and immoral practices"; he was afterward disfellowshipped at Nauvoo. By Pratt's advice he immediately went to that city, and was restored to full standing in the church, as any bad man always was when he acknowledged submission to the church authorities.* Plenty of emigrants offered themselves under Orson Pratt's call, but of the 300 first applicants for passage only about 60 had money enough to pay their expenses.