Are the Ten Tribes Intact?--A much mooted question among our people, particularly since the discovery of the North Pole, where theorists have insisted upon locating the ten tribes, is whether or not those tribes have lost their identity. The fact that no such people were found at the pole by Peary and other explorers, shatters the exact location theory; but does it dispose of the main issue--the supposed existence of the ten tribes as a distinct people, somewhere "in the land of the north?" Such a supposition might be well founded, and yet much of the blood of Ephraim be among certain northern nations. Some of the pilgrims might easily have "mixed" with peoples encountered on the way, while journeying to their ultimate destination. Beyond this suggestion, I have no theory to advance. A tradition of the Church has assigned to John the Revelator the mission of leading the ten tribes from the land of the north.--(D. and C. 77:14.) The Babylonian Captivity.--After the predictions of Amos, Hosea, and others, in relation to the kingdom of Israel, came the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, foretelling the fate of the kingdom of Judah. This kingdom, about 585 B. C., was destroyed by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar, and the Jews were carried into captivity. Lehi and His Colony.--Just before that disaster, Lehi and his colony left Jerusalem, and crossed over to this land--America--which, by them and by Mulek's colony that came later, was peopled with the descendants of Joseph and of Judah, both of whom are represented, in a degenerate state, by the American Indians. Israelitish Characteristics.--Look at the features of the Indian. Are they not Jewish? Quite as strikingly so as that many of his customs and traditions are Israelitish. Who, than the savage Lamanite, better understands the Mosaic law of retaliation--"an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth"? Nor does he care whose eye or whose tooth it is, whether that of the person who injured him, or one of the latter's tribe or nation. He is too much of an Israelite to object to proxies and substitutes. Jerusalem Rebuilt.--The Babylonian captivity lasted seventy years. Some of the Jews, under the permissive edict of Cyrus, then returned and rebuilt their city and temple. Only a remnant came back, however, a colony of fifty thousand, led by Zerubbabel and Joshua. The rest remained in their scattered condition. The Jews who rebuilt Jerusalem were those to whose descendants Christ came, and predicted, after their rejection of him, that their "house" should be "left unto them desolate" (Matt. 23:37, 38).