If the reader will bear in mind that in July we had given a battalion of five hundred of our ablest men to fight our country's battles in Mexico, it will help them to realize the additional sacrifice the people would now have to make to fit out and part with one hundred and forty men for a pioneer advance guard, whose duty it would be to find the place where, under the blessing of God, the Saints might rest in peace. By parting with the battalion boys, our camps were so weakened that in many instances mothers and children had to do the rough, out-of-door work of husbands and fathers; and many of the early converts to Mormonism were from the eastern states, and came from homes where refinement had clustered round the family hearth and music and song had happified their lives. The strenuous nature of frontier struggles was consequently new to them. Nevertheless, in building up temporary homes at Winter Quarters, it was no strange thing to see the sisters hauling logs for the cabin, or mixing and carrying mud for the chinking and daubing; and in the winter, when death stalked through our camps, it seemed that a heavy per cent of the "called ones" were our strongest, bravest men; men whose places could not be filled, no matter how willing the substitutes were. Nature seldom qualifies the woman to do the work of the man. There is, however, much truth in the adage, "Where there's a will there's a way," and the deeds accomplished under the most trying circumstances prove that the Mormon people had the will, for what, indeed, is will but another name for faith? And to those who have faith, all things are possible. Only by this God-given power, so little known and comprehended, were our people enabled to cross the trackless plains, subdue the wilderness, and make the "desert to blossom as the rose." Often in our public meetings the Elders would liken the Church to a ship, and the "Ship Zion" was no mean figure of speech. Let us carry it further and see her launched upon a boisterous, unknown sea; then let an emergency arise in which the captain and many of the ablest sailors are called away and the ropes have to be manipulated by inexperienced hands; for that is exactly the condition we were in.