Here Elder Woodruff's industrious nature asserted itself, and he went into the wheat field pitching bundles of grain. After leaving his kinsmen he continued his journey by wagon, rivers, lakes, and railways via Chicago and arrived in Boston on August 12th, 1848. The journey, by the route which he had taken from Council Bluffs, covered a distance of 2,595 miles. He remained some time preaching the gospel at Boston and then continued his journey to Portland, Maine. From there he went to Scarboro where he met other relations. It was a happy reunion after a separation of eight years. The return of Apostle Woodruff to the East would naturally awaken within him the keenest satisfaction over the opportunity it afforded to meet, after years of strenuous life and marvelous adventure, old friends and kinsmen. To them, his affections first turned, and he told all the wonderful things which God had wrought in the gathering of the Saints to the Valleys of the Mountains. From Maine he returned to Boston, went on to New York, and a little later took up his labors in Philadelphia. {333} It was here he called on Colonel Kane, a tried and true friend to the Mormon people in the hour of their sorrow. By Colonel Kane he was most cordially welcomed. To his wife who remained with her people in Maine, he wrote on October 18th, 1848, this very significant letter: "I have been much blessed by the spirit of God since I saw you. I have felt more of the presence and power of God in me than I expected to enjoy on this Eastern mission. I have felt that someone has prayed for me much of late. I wonder if it was Phoebe! I know how often you pray for me, and I feel its power and prize it much. I have never felt such a desire to prove worthy of your confidence and trust, and shun every appearance of evil, keep out of the path of all temptation, and do right in all things. I have had much of the spirit of secret prayer, have poured out my soul in supplication to God with tears of joy, and at the same time the visions of my mind have been opened so that I saw clearly my duty to my God, to my wife, to my children, to the Saints, and to the world at large. I have also seen the awful and certain judgments of God, which like a gathering storm are ready to burst upon the whole Gentile world, especially this nation which has heard the sound of the gospel but rejected it, together with the testimony of the servants of God; has stoned and killed the prophets; has become drunk with the blood of martyrs and Saints; and finally has driven the entire Church with the priesthood and keys of eternal life out of its midst into the wilderness and mountains of Israel."