[Brigham Young Sermon] As it is expected we shall make some remarks - my feelings would consent to do all the talking if my health would permit as much as my spirit desires I should do more than I do - I have my first career of preached. I preached long and loud but of late it makes me sick - I contemplate doing considerable talking this side the river - without any one has expected it, they can tell my feelings - I am willing to talk - my text is truth my circuit the world. We went west and have returned in safety with all of our effects except what horses we have lost through carelessness - We left Winter Quarters with 73 wagons 143 persons in No. could not walk until after we got to Laramie - we traveled as Abraham did not knowing where we went, we found what we anticipated will be a comfortable place. We have found what the brethren called a beautiful place and a delightsome spot - we left April 24 and arrived July 22 - and I got in on the 24th after leaving Grand Island did not see a place fit for raising grain - the nights were cold and required as much clothing as last winter - traveling through sage country interspersed with grease wood dry windy dusty - hot in day cold in night and some of the brethren thought we never should find a place. We saw plenty of snow in the Sweetwater - right and left on Green River it was all around us - at Green River nearly all the camp were taken sick by the mountain fever - we found the ice every morning and when we could look down into the valley it was very delightsome, you may be sure. When we were in the valley there was rain on the mountains but none in the valley - When I got into the valley found the brethren located on a small creek - near southeast of the Salt Lake found high mountains in the lake - the valley about 35 miles long by 20 wide - we found in the evening the air was warm - about 1 1/2 mile north of temple block is ward spring and about 1 1/2 mile further is a very hot spring - on the south of us is a very extensive but pure spring - I judge there are boiling springs in the bottom of the lake for the whole body is quite warm - I consider the warm springs and the high mountains will make that place very warm - the twin peaks are 6619 feet - we suppose the mountain on the west of the valley is equally high - I conclude from natural philosophy that they will also gather cold air - one night it was cold - the thermometer was down to 47 1/2 o, and that is warm enough for corn to grow - the valley looks level but there is a vast difference between it and a level prairie - the Utah Outlet is about six rods wide and two to four feet deep, there are four streams large enough for every kind of factory there is quite a large stream on the west of the river - most of the streams lose themselves in the sand - this part of the valley is beautifully covered with fine rushes and the trappers heretofore go there to winter their stock - we cant learn that the snow was ever deeper than last winter and then it was about three inches deep - in the valley find it perfectly warm and in the mountains you will find ice - the water is different there than in this country when the heavy showers fall on the mountains it tears down rocks and gravel - at the temple block I suppose there is made earth for sixty feet. The earth is continually growing and decomposing - the granite forms red blue white and all kind of clay that makes the Ware. I never saw any better soil in my life - you can find any kind you want - you can find gravel or any quantity or quality - some portions of the country this side looks like Venetian red or Spanish brown - the high mountains contain the five different kinds of granite - Brother Carrington has as good an idea - he is a complete practitioner in the science and has good as any in the US, we conclude we can build houses of it - and then can form blocks of sun dried brick and the way we could make them was a caution we run a stream down to the northeast corner of the adobe lot - run a furrow around - each side to the southeast corner - those sun dried brick we suppose will stand as good as in Mexico and stand perfectly nice any men in the world can make them and make their adobies right on the spot for the wall - and can cover the houses with the dry dirt over a coat of plaster and these are our houses, there are lots of Indians but they are civil - the Pawnees are savage and they make their brags that if they want guns and ammunition all they have to do is to kill some white man - the snakes are said to be very peaceful - the Utahs are a poor people and can see hundreds of them nearly stark naked and they live on crickets - the crickets eat green leaves and grass and the Indians eat crickets - Col. Chamberlain eat some of them and he declares them to be like a dry oak leaf - the Utahs are very strict and severe on thieves (the Indian horse thief scrape) and things about has drift? as the Mormons will be when they get there - as soon as a few lose their heads it will be a warning - I never will tell a man steal until the thing ought to be stole - when a man can steal the state of Missouri or Illinois, they will do a thing that is manly - we turned out our horses in the valley and they were perfectly safe - we heard of Miles Goodyear being settled on Weber River - he left an old man named Wells and three others, while he went to California for stock and seeds - the three men left Wells alone - he planted a garden of 1/4 acre - with a stockade of pickets and watered it with buckets out of Weber River - he has about forty head of cattle - the Indians have not disturbed him or any of his property it never rains there unless you rain it yourself and we irrigated the land with this very cold water - some of the corn measured 26 inches in length in three weeks - we planted 84 acres - kept out continual exploring parties fenced in a 10 a block - put up 27 log houses complete and did about half the labor to fence it in - we being obliged to go there it is a first rate country - and an old man said he came from that country in order to die - it is an healthy country as any in the known world - some of the healthiest parts of Italy it never rains - you may bid adieu to all mildewed cloth after you leave Grand Island - in regard to rain - I would rather irrigate my land than be liable to have my crops wasted away - you never driven to a shelter to get out of the rain - and you can find that you can irrigate with far less expense than have the rains - the brethren lay on the ground and slept and not a person had a cold - sickness is the greatest calamity that ever come upon any people - and as Joseph said years ago '"I pray the Lord that we may go to a country where the brethren will not die - as to trees the Balm of Gilead are the best I ever tasted - I could almost defy a person to eat one bud it is so powerful - like the seeds of the prickly ash - the timber is in a high state of preservation as you will have to work hard to get it there is also rock maple - which is better for sugar than the regular sugar maple - in one canyon there is about 10,000 cords of it - Shumway said he cut off five logs of 16 feet from one balsam ophir and that 16 inches through - the further we work the more timber we found - some of those trees look 150 feet high - and you can see tier upon tier and then a little bluff - and what you think little shaddes - is 10 or 12 inches through - When we have lived there 10 years we will find more timber than we now know of - we understand there is plenty of lime we found - rock maple - its as hard as a rock - there is some good white oak not plenty - the box is there, the brethren from England know what that is - there's three articles that the Prophets spoke of to beautify the temple - (then spoke of Captain Brown and Higgins and the Battalion) I don't want the sisters to have a mourning spirit about them - its all right, the hand of the Lord is in it - when the Book of Mormon was printed Oliver Cowdery, Z. Patterson and three others went to the Lamanites - the agent told them to leave straight forthwith - we have tried to preach to the Lamanites - Governor Boggs
placed an army to prevent the Mormons going north among the Pottawatomies the government tell us to go west - that's were we want to go but durst not say it - we traveled hard from February to 20 June to get to this point. The Lord sent a man to stop us, right here - at the same time the US brought out the Pottawatomies - the Mormons were brought and set down here and the Mormons now have possession of half of the state of Iowa - and if we are not in actual possession we mean to have - here you can stay and make you fit out - God has put it in their (the US) hearts to do this - they meant it for evil, but it turns out for our good - we run out a city in the valley. -- Council Point, Iowa [Thomas Bullock Minutes, LJA; Thomas Bullock—LDS Church Reporter, 1844-56.C, Archives, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.; GCM, Archives, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah..; Leonard J. Arrington Papers, Special Collections, Merrill-Cazier Library, Utah State University, Logan.. (A reference reading LJA 12-55-5, 10, means LJA Series 12, Box 55, Folder 5, page 10.) 9-12-3, 136-139]
[source: The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young, Ed. Richard S. Van Wagoner, Smith-Pettit Foundation, Salt Lake City (2009), http://bit.ly/BY-discourses]
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