[Brigham Young Sermon] The weather this winter thus far has been very mild. The health of the brethren at Winter Quarters is better than at any previous time. The Seventies and others have manufactured several loads of willow baskets which are ready for market. Nearly every part of the flouring mill is ready to be put together. Wheat has risen in the border counties of Missouri from eighteen and twenty cents per bushel to forty and fifty cents, corn from ten and twelve cents to twenty-five cents per bushel in consequence of the location of the Camp of Israel. Pork has been sold here at from three to four cents per pound, some lately at two and a half cents, corn fifty cents per bushel and flour about three dollars per hundred, beef from three to four cents per pound by the quarter. Several schools for children have been started in Camp within the last ten days. The buildings of the city were generally of logs averaging from twelve to eighteen feet long, a few of which were split; the floors were laid with puncheon (logs split about three inches thick and hewed on one side). The timber used for floors was principally lynn and cottonwood; a great many roofs were made by splitting oak timbers into boards called shakes, six inches wide about three feet long and half an inch thick, which were kept to their places by weight poles, a few were nailed on; many roofs were made with willows, straw and earth about a foot thick while a few others had puncheon. Many of the cabins had no floors. A few persons who could not procure logs made dugouts on the side hills, cutting out a fireplace at the upper end, the ridge pole of the roof was supported by two uprights in the centre, such were generally roofed with willows straw and earth. The most of the chimneys were built of prairie sods, and the doors made of shakes pinned together, wooden hinges and finished with a string latch. The log houses were daubed inside with clay; a few rather more aristocratic cabins had fireplaces made of clay pounded in for jams and back. A few persons had stoves. The building of these houses was prosecuted with unremitting energy, at any hour of the evening the sound of the ax or the saw relieved the stillness of the night. There has been considerable difficulty to get flour and meal in sufficient quantities to feed the Camp; a little grain has been ground at Week's mill (twenty-five miles distance, built by government for the Pottawatomies), the balance by the mills in Missouri, upwards of one hundred and fifty miles distant which made very coarse flour and meal. The inhabitants of Winter Quarters have had to grind wheat and corn by coffee and hand mills, which in many instances only cut the grain, other pounded it with a pestle suspended to a spring pole and sifted out the finer for bread, the coarse for hominy. Some eat their wheat boiled, others boiled their corn in lye and made hominy while some boiled corn in the ear until it was sufficiently soft to be grated, many pieces of old tin were converted into graters for this purpose. Much anxiety is manifested for the completion of the mill. -- Winter Quarters, Nebraska [Manuscript History of Brigham Young, 1846- 1847. Elden J. Watson, ed. Salt Lake City: Smith Secretarial Service, 1971.:486-488]
[source: The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young, Ed. Richard S. Van Wagoner, Smith-Pettit Foundation, Salt Lake City (2009)]
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