* "When the merchants sold a calico or gingham dress pattern they threw in their profit by giving a spool of thread (two hundred yards), hooks and eyes and lining. In the thread business, however, it was only a few years after that thirty and fifty yard spools took the place of the two hundred yards."--"History of Daviess County", p. 161. The pioneer agriculturist of those days not only lacked the transportation facilities and improved agricultural appliances which have assisted the developers of the Northwest, but they did not even understand the nature and capability of the soil. The newcomers in western Missouri looked on the rich prairie land as worthless, and they almost invariably directed their course to the timber, where the soil was more easily broken up, and material for buildings was available. The first attempts to plough the prairie sod were very primitive. David Dailey made the first trial in Jackson County with what was called a "barshear plough" (drawn by from four to eight yokes of oxen), the "shear" of which was fastened to the beam. This cut the sod in one direction pretty well, but when he began to cross-furrow, the sod piled up in front of the plough and stopped his progress. Determined to see what the soil would grow, he cut holes in the sod with an axe, and in these dropped his seed. The first sod was broken in Daviess County in 1834, with a plough made to order, "to see what the prairies amounted to in the way of raising a crop." Such was the country toward which the first Mormon missionaries turned their faces. We have seen that the first intimation in the Mormon records of a movement to the West was found in Smith's order to Oliver Cowdery in 1830 to go and establish the church among the Lamanites (Indians), and that Rigdon expected that the church would remain in Ohio, when he wrote to his flock from Palmyra. The four original missionaries--Cowdery, P. P. Pratt, Peter Whitmer, and Peterson--did not stop long in Kirtland, but, taking with them Frederick G. Williams, they pushed on westward to Sandusky, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, preaching to some Indians on the way, until they reached Independence, Jackson County, Missouri, early in 1831. That county forms a part of the western border of the state, and from 1832, until the railroad took the place of wagon trains, Independence was the eastern terminus of the famous Santa Fe trail, and the point of departure for many companies destined both for Oregon and California. Pratt, describing their journey west of St. Louis, says: "We travelled on foot some three hundred miles, through vast prairies and through trackless wilds of snow; no beaten road, houses few and far between. We travelled for whole days, from morning till night, without a house or fire. We carried on our backs our changes of clothing, several books, and corn bread and raw pork."* * "Autobiography of P. P. Pratt," p. 54.