In April, 1847, an advance party under the guidance of no less a person than Brigham Young started out the Platte trail in search of Zion. One hundred and forty-three men, seventy-two wagons, one hundred and seventy-five horses, and six months' rations, they took along, if the figures of one of their historians may be accepted. Under strict military order, the detachment proceeded to the mountains. It is one of the ironies of fate that the Mormons had no sooner selected their abode beyond the line of the United States in their flight from persecution than conquest from Mexico extended the United States beyond them to the Pacific. They themselves aided in this defeat of their plan, since from among them Kearny had recruited in 1846 a battalion for his army of invasion. Up the Platte, by Fort Laramie, to South Pass and beyond, the prospectors followed the well-beaten trail. Oregon homeseekers had been cutting it deep in the prairie sod for five years. West of South Pass they bore southwest to Fort Bridger, and on the 24th of July, 1847, Brigham gazed upon the waters of the Great Salt Lake. Without serious premeditation, so far as is known, and against the advice of one of the most experienced of mountain guides, this valley by a later-day Dead Sea was chosen for the future capital. Fields were staked out, ground was broken by initial furrows, irrigation ditches were commenced at once, and within a month the town site was baptized the City of the Great Salt Lake. Behind the advance guard the main body remained in winter quarters, making ready for their difficult search for the promised land; moving at last in the late spring in full confidence that a Zion somewhere would be prepared for them. The successor of Joseph relied but little upon supernatural aid in keeping his flock under control. Commonly he depended upon human wisdom and executive direction. But upon the eve of his own departure from winter quarters he had made public, for the direction of the main body, a written revelation: "The Word and Will of the Lord concerning the Camp of Israel in their Journeyings to the West." Such revelations as this, had they been repeated, might well have created or renewed popular confidence in the real inspiration of the leader. The order given was such as a wise source of inspiration might have formed after constant intercourse with emigrants and traders upon the difficulties of overland migration and the dangers of the way. "Let all the people of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and those who journey with them," read the revelation, "be organized into companies, with a covenant and a promise to keep all the commandments and statutes of the Lord our God. Let the companies be organized with captains of hundreds, and captains of fifties, and captains of tens, with a president and counsellor at their head, under direction of the Twelve Apostles: and this shall be our covenant, that we will walk in all the ordinances of the Lord.