OCR Text |
Show Page 74 CHAPTER IV "THE TRANSFORMATION" Orson Pratt's English mission began idyllically - this time he was drawn in a two-horse carriage, instead of walking the nearly six hundred miles from Nauvoo to Detroit. The weather held and the prairie pitched them gently along as they pursued their roadless journey to the nations. They were continually reminded on the way of the irony of their situation. The settlements teemed with the unemployed (the result of the 1837 panic) and illness was virtually pandemic; a wave of cholera, perhaps, or malaria, had closed down stores and public houses all along the route. Yet they, who had fronted forced exile, completely impoverished only months before, now fared peacefully and in unaccustomed comfort on an errand which had seemed so recently unachievable. Within a day's journey from Detroit, the brothers stopped and Orson preached to attentive congregations around the city. Here also, they encountered their parents, Jared and Charity Pratt, who were still in the care of their oldest brother Anson. The patriarch, nearly seventy, suffered within a few weeks of death from the epidemic fever, and the two apostles remained with him fourteen days, reunited father and sons divided so many years before by the press of poverty. Detroit was the nearest well-developed port; from here, one could travel by water all the way to London, and Orson was impatient to be off. They sold their carriage at a loss of about one hundred dollars, profiting enough, though, to make their way down Lake Erie to Buffalo, thence by |