Another Prophet and Seer.--But Joseph did not live to accompany his people upon their historic journey. Another mighty leader was raised up to pilot modern Israel to their promised land. Of Brigham Young it is related, that while crossing the plains west of the Missouri River, in the spring and summer of 1847, he had a vision of the region that he and his fellow pilgrims were about to inhabit. He saw a tent settling down from heaven over the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, and heard a voice proclaim: "This is the place where my people Israel shall pitch their tents." Such is the testimony of Erastus Snow, [5] one of the principal men who came with President Young to the Rocky Mountains. Consequently when the great Pioneer said, "This is the place," he was repeating words that had been spoken to him--repeating them while viewing with natural eyes a scene that his spirit eyes had already beheld. Human Wisdom vs. Divine Guidance.--What availed, after that, the pessimistic forebodings of the mountaineer, James Bridger, who camped with the Pioneers just after they passed the Rocky Mountains, and whose laconic speech, "I would give a thousand dollars if I knew an ear of corn could ripen in Salt Lake Valley," has been often and variously quoted? What availed the roseate account given of the California Coast by the ultra-optimistic Samuel Brannan, who, after sailing with a "Mormon" colony from New York and landing at the Bay of San Francisco, crossed the Sierra Nevada, met the Pioneers on Green River, and endeavored to persuade them that the flowery slopes of the Pacific were a better place of abode for the exiled people than the parched alkali wastes of "The Great American Desert?" Brigham Young knew better than Colonel Bridger or Elder Brannan what was for the best. Looking past the present into the future, he had for all such warnings and persuasions, one reply: "_This is the place_." Prophecy Fulfilled and Vision Verified.--Brigham Young was not the man to ignore divine guidance. His own vision was before him, beckoning him on; and Joseph Smith's prediction behind him, urging him forward and pointing out the way. The Latter-day Saints were to "become a mighty people"--not in California, not along the Pacific Coast, but "in the midst of the Rocky Mountains." Footnotes 1. The history of guerilla warfare and its merciless suppression along the Missouri-Kansas border, amply bears out this assertion. 2. Hist. Ch. Vol. 5, p. 85. This prophecy began to be fulfilled early in February, 1846, when the first companies of the migrating Saints left Nauvoo for the West, crossing the frozen Mississippi on the ice. About the middle of June they reached the Missouri River, then the frontier of the Nation, where their further progress was delayed for a whole season by the enlistment of the "Mormon" Battalion--five hundred men--who responded to a call from the Government and volunteered to assist the United States in its war with Mexico.