of the government officer produced in the camp amounted almost to
dismay. Five hundred men fit to bear arms to be drafted from
that camp! What would become of the rest? Already women and
boys had been pressed into service to do the work of men; already
the sick and the halt had been neglected; and many graves marked
the path they had traversed, whose tenants had passed to their
last sleep through lack of care.

But how long did they hesitate? Scarcely an hour; it was the
call of their country. True, they were even then leaving the
national soil, but not of their own will. To them their country
was and is the promised land, the Lord's chosen place, the land
of Zion. "You shall have your battalion," said Brigham Young to
Captain Allen, the muster officer, "and if there are not young
men enough, we will take the old men, and if they are not enough,
we will take the women." Within a week from the time President
Polk's message was received, the entire force, in all five
hundred and forty-nine souls, was on the march to Fort
Leavenworth. Their path from the Missouri to the Pacific led
them over two thousand miles, much of this distance being
measured through deserts, which prior to that time had not been
trodden by civilized foot.

Colonel Cooke, the commander of the "Mormon" Battalion, declared,
"History may be searched in vain for an equal march of infantry."
Many were disabled through the severity of the march, and
numerous cases of sickness and death were chronicled. General
Kearney and his successor, Governor R. B. Mason, as military
commandants of California, spoke in high praise of this
organization, and in their official reports declared that they