In the spring of 1848 they started from Council Bluffs for Salt Lake; and where in the history of our country will you find a more daring act than this of Brigham Young's? And where will you find a more heroic one than this of the Mormon people? Well has it been said: "It was a pilgrimage which has not been paralleled in the history of mankind since Moses led the Israelites from Egypt." They had sickness, weariness, skirmishes with the Indians; but they also had their pleasures and rewards in this extraordinary journey of several months. They were surprised with beautiful scenery, and they languished over dreary wastes. Brigham told them stories, encouraged dancing to make them merry, and had theatrical performances to distract their attention. Children were born, and numbers died and were buried on the route, but they pressed on under their leader's direction for their new home beyond the States and their enemies, and in the autumn of 1848 crossed the Wahsatch Mountains and reached the Salt Lake Valley, their future home, although at that time a wilderness. Remember that this exodus was undertaken with the express purpose of placing themselves beyond the reach of the statutes with which their faith was in conflict; but while they were journeying toward their land of promise, it was conquered by the United States from Mexico. Nevertheless, they were in a remote and uninhabited portion of the national domain, and where mountain barriers and leagues of wilderness lay between them and those whom they regarded as their persecutors. Now, it seems to me that the Government and people of Illinois did a most impolitic thing when they drove the Mormons from their State into the wilderness of the West. I firmly believe that if the Mormon Community had been allowed to remain at Nauvoo, free to develop its theories, in so far as they did not involve illegal acts, and in so far as they did, amenable to the law, but without illegal interference, the subsequent results would have been greatly changed.