IN the fall of 1838 a brother by the name of Israel Barlow left the State of Missouri under the exterminating order of Governor Boggs. By missing his way, or, what is more likely, directed by the hand of a kind Providence, he did not leave the State by the same route as the great body of his people, but taking a northeasterly course, struck the Des Moines River a short distance above its mouth, in the Territory of Iowa. He was without food and destitute of clothing. Making his wants known to the people living in that locality, they kindly supplied him with food and raiment. To them he related the story of the persecution of the Latter-day Saints in Missouri, and how his people, poor and destitute as himself, were fleeing from the State _en masse_. His relation of the sufferings of the Saints, and the cruelties heaped upon them by their heartless persecutors, enlisted the sympathies of his hearers, and they gave him letters of introduction to several gentlemen, among which was one to Dr. Isaac Galland, a gentleman of some influence living at Commerce, a small settlement on the banks of the Mississippi, in Illinois, and which afterward became the site of Nauvoo. Dr. Galland owned considerable land in Commerce, and he wrote the Saints located in Quincy that several farms could doubtless be rented in his locality, and that perhaps some fifty families could be accommodated at Commerce. In addition to this offer of lands made to The Church, another and a previous one had been made of twenty thousand acres, between the Des Moines and the Mississippi rivers. This tract could have been purchased at two dollars per acre, to be paid in twenty annual payments without interest. A conference was convened at Quincy in February, and the advisability of making the purchase and settling the Saints in a body came up for consideration. It was decided by the conference that it was not advisable to locate lands at that time. Subsequently, however, on the ninth day of March, the Saints having received further offers of land in Illinois and Iowa, called another public meeting and appointed a committee to go and examine the lands offered. In Iowa, the people and officers of the Territory expressed a kindly feeling toward the exiled Saints. The governor of Iowa--Robert Lucas--had known the Saints in Ohio, and testified to Dr. Galland that the Mormon people, when they were in Ohio, were good citizens, and he respected them as such now, and would treat them accordingly, should they, or any part of them, decide to settle in his Territory. The statement is made in answer to a letter of inquiry on the subject of the Mormons settling in Iowa. He wrote to Dr. Isaac Galland as follows: EXECUTIVE OFFICE, IOWA, BURLINGTON March, 1839.