A week previous to the date fixed for our departure we were at President Taylor's office to learn if he had any special instruction for us. We hoped and expected that he would outline our work or that we might have some particular rule of guidance in that distant and lonely land. But the President's only word was: "Yes, brethren, we want you to go to Australasia, and build up the Kingdom of God there." Three times we asked our question: "Are there any special instructions for us?" And three times we received the answer in the President's well-known impressive manner: "Yes, brethren, we want you to go to Australasia, and build up the Kingdom of God there." Elder May looked at him with amazement in his eyes; and certainly if my face indicated my feeling, it betrayed the utmost surprise. Was this all? President Taylor was the Prophet of God on earth; and we were inexperienced Elders going to a land nearly ten thousand miles away from home, to labor in a mission which had been abandoned by older and more learned men than we were. Naturally, we expected to hear what we must do when we reached Australia; how we must live; how approach the people; and how apportion our time to the various districts of that vast field. And yet our interview was ended. President Taylor's manner and words--though very kind, and even fatherly, were decisive; and we withdrew in some disappointment. When we got out on the street we looked at each other in a most woe begone manner. I do not know when I felt more forlorn or helpless than at that hour. But we lived and learned to bless that significant sentence, which President Taylor uttered in his wisdom, and by the inspiration of the Spirit. It became to us better, far better, than a book full of the "special instructions" which we had coveted. Whenever we were discouraged, or torn by doubt, or oppressed by fear; we had our guide: "Build up the Kingdom of God in those lands!" And prayer to God invariably showed us the right means to reach that result. If we had been dependent upon a certain method of gospel presentation, and less dependent upon our Heavenly Father, I am sure that we would not have been so greatly blessed as we were in our labors. We left Zion on Tuesday, May 7th, 1878; and sailed from San Francisco on Monday, May 13th, 1878, on the steamer, _City of Sydney_. We took steerage passage, and found ourselves in a motley crowd. There were about fifty white passengers and one hundred and twenty-five Chinamen in this part of the ship, and we had a perfect Babel. The Chinamen kept up their own interminable chattering. And among the whites were Welshmen, Irishmen, Scotchmen, Jew, Gentile, Infidel: representatives of every race and of every sect. We even had a dynamiter on board--a person who claimed friendship with the notorious O'Donovan Rossa of New York.