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Show Page 146 that they were a home manufacture of their own ingenuity..." He found a huge "mammoth bone" on the ground, but had no way to transport it. And in the sky he saw wonders: a beautiful "lunar rainbow" the night of May 30, with the lowering silhouette of the Black Hills on the horizon. Beyond that - the first of the Rockies. With June came an initial glimpse of ten-thousand-foot Laramie Peak, the beginning of the good granite wall that would exalt and close up Zion. Orson's interest in the peak was at the moment more scientific, however, than theological - he determined that the mountain affected the weather, for its whitened summit "acts the part of a condenser upon the vapour of the atmosphere... we have been visited with thundershowers, which seem to originate in the 29 vicinity of this peak." The appearance of Laramie Peak also signaled civilization. Here at the border of the Rockies the fur company had established its principal outpost, Fort Laramie. The Mormons invaded apprehensively, but with curiosity - for his part, Orson measured the height and circumference of the adobe walls. He took six observations of the longitude and cursed Fremont for his hopelessly wrongheaded maps - the distinguished explorer was three hundred and eighty feet off on the elevation of the fort. Laramie was commanded by an affable Frenchman named Bordeau (Orson writes it "Boudeau") , who welcomed the Mormon leaders and entertained them with Indian stories and information about the ascent to South Pass that lay ahead of them. He also had some edgy comments about Lilburn Boggs, who had boarded with him nearly a year before. At this, the Mormons must have 30 smiled sardonically. Many other emigrants lay over at this oasis before the roughest leg of the western journey - one man described the broad meadow at Fort Laramie as a sea of white canvas in May and June during those years, and surprisingly, the Latter-day Saints found a few of their |
