providing a corral for the stock. In such manner was the wisdom of the
Lord concerning this hegira supplemented in detail by the worldly
forethought of his servant Brigham.

They started along the north bank of the Platte River under the
auspicious shine of an April sun. A better route was along the south
bank where grass was more plentiful and the Indians less troublesome.
But along the south bank parties of migrating Gentiles might also be
met, and these sons of perdition were to be avoided at any cost--"at
least for the present," said Brigham, in tones of sage significance.

And so for two hundred miles they broke a new way over the plains, to be
known years after as "the old Mormon trail," to be broadened later by
the gold-seekers of forty-nine, and still later to be shod with steel,
when the miracle of a railway was worked in the desert.

To Joel Rae, Elder after the order of Melchisedek, unsullied product of
the temple priesthood, it was a time of wondrous soul-growth. In that
mysterious realm of pathless deserts, of illimitable prairies and
boundless plains, of nameless rivers and colossal hills, a land of
dreams, of romance, of marvellous adventure, he felt strange powers
growing within him. It seemed that in such a place the one who opened
his soul to heaven must become endowed with all those singular gifts he
had longed for. He looked confidently forward to the time when they
should regard him as a man who could work miracles.

At the head of Grand Island they came to vast herds of buffalo--restless
brown seas of humped, shaggy backs and fiercely lowered heads. In their
first efforts to slay these they shot them full in the forehead, and
were dismayed to find that their bullets rebounded harmlessly. They