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Show - 6 - Benjamin Perkin With nearly fifty years ahead of him in which to complet the wise pattern set for his earthly destiny as cherished by· Providence ever before those nineteen years in the coal mine, we view him now as the Joseph of his Fatherts house, the faithful head of an appreciative posterity. e left Cedar on the 25th of October 1879 and reached Bluff April 6, 1880. We had to make our road through rocks water and sand. The story or that inter at the hole in the rock as related in other records, is an essential part of the story of Ben Perkins. Here was the situation a little different to any of its kind ever faced by human bein~s before. Old precedents learned from books fai~ed to apply, this was a crises calling for resourceful minds, men able to blaze paths across uncharted wilds~ "How in reason can we ever take wagons acfoss this slantindicular rock?tt Some one demanded. Ben Perkins had the plan and the song to sing while the plan was executed. And there wa$ no vapor of theory about that plan-the wa~ons ith their ox teams really did come from the dizzy height "on Uncle Ben's dugway" and the songs came back in answering echos from the towering eliffs,of the Colorado. That company~ eighty wagons, headed vaguely for the mouth of the Montezuma womewhere far away beyond unexplored regions would have spent a dismal winter there on the Colorado, with snow on the mountains hemmin~ them off behind, if it had not been for some apostles of ~cod cheer like Ben Perkins, to su~~est that they build bon fires of black brush and dance on the bare rock and sin~ the ~loom of winter out of camp. A short time after our arrival at Bluff, Sarah was baptized in the San Juan river, and in the fall she went back with Hyrum and Rachel Perkins to Cedar. The people were not very well satisfied with Bluff, and next year there was considerable talk of leavin~ the place, so I sold what I could of y eattle and went back to Cedar~ The story of the winter of the hole-in-the-rock and hard fou~ht trip from there on to San Juan may be told here, but there are account of it, and they should be read in connection with this. On the 6th of April 1880, that weary foot sore eompany reached the very first place on the San Juan where there was room and land to justify them in making a preliminary stop. fhe mouth of Montezuma, there intended destinatio ~ , was still fifteen iles away, but most of their teams were too nearly worn out to ~o any farther~ Someone proposed that they make their colony right there. It was agreed and they called it Bluff City. To drop the s.!.U years lat·er. Bluff was built on the sand where the river had once had its bed~ It was more than a hundred miles to its nearest town, and farther to any base of supplies, or any scource from which help could be had in case of trouble with the numerous indians~ The Navajos were on the South, the Piutes all around, a breed or inveterate thieves stealin~ the .little colony blind at every opportunity, and the old river itself set the pace of inxerable outlaws of plowin~ back and forth across the valley with no regard to ditches, houses, fences, or anythin~ else. It was not an invitin~ prospect, and if Uncle Ben found it a little bit different to what he had be raised and thou~ht best to ~et back farther into the beaten path it is not to be wondered ato Precedtn~ with his aecount after ke went back to Cedar. The crusade against polygamists was pretty stron~ about that time, and when we reached Para an d. Dalton was killed by a u. s. Marshallo That murder of Ed. Dalton because he was a polygamist, was not a wry pleasant inducement to become a polygamist, yet the account continues? |
