festivities. The Stars and Stripes streamed above the camp;
bands played; choirs sang; there were speeches, and picnics, and
prayers. Experiences were compared as to the journeyings on the
plains; stories were told of the shifts to which the people had
been put by the vicissitudes of famine; but these dread
experiences seemed to them now like a dream of the night; on this
day all were happy. Were they not safe from savage foes both red
and white? There had been peace for a season; and their desert
homes were already smiling in wealth of flower and tree; the
wilderness was blossoming under their feet; their consciences
were void of offense toward their fellows. Yet at that very
hour, all unbeknown to themselves, and without the opportunity of
speaking a word in defense, these people had been convicted of
insurrection and treason.

It was midday and the festivities were at their height, when a
party of men rode into camp and sought an interview with Governor
Young. Three of them had plainly ridden hard and far; they gave
their report;--an armed force of thousands was at that hour
approaching the territory; the boasts of officers and men as to
what they would do when they found themselves in "Mormon" towns
were reported; and these stories called up, in the minds of those
who heard, the dread scenes of Far West and Nauvoo. Had these
colonists of the wilderness not gone far enough to satisfy the
hatred of their fellow-citizens in this republic of liberty?
They had halted between the civilization of the east and that of
the west, they had fled from the country that refused them a
home, and now the nation would eject them from their desert
lodgings.