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Show Page 145 installed on the Oregon trail - along with other messages scrawled on the bleached skulls of the buffalo and left along the road. Messages from on high were not lacking. Brigham Young stopped the train at Scottsbluff to scorch some of the more frivolous of the priesthood on the subject of "light-mindedness," and enjoined them to "lay up a store of useful knowledge from everything that was seen and heard...instead of spending time in idleness and vanity." Orson concurred - it must have cheered him to hear his Prophet speak of the importance of observing the natural world and learning from it: "If the Saints (have) leisure hours, they could spend them to much better advantage than playing cards, as there (is) a world of knowledge to be obtained and every moment should be improved in storing the mind with some good principle," Orson insisted to the fidgety Saints. Apparently they had complained of boredom and found an outlet in what their leaders considered unruly talk - Orson pointed to the books in camp and wished for twenty-three hours a day to study. But he was not the unsympathetic pedant - he told them that he knew "it is difficult to bring our minds to diligent and constant studies, in pursuit of knowledge all at once, but by steady practice and perseverance we shall become habituated to it, and it will become a pleasure to us." 28 He also says that he can't understand people who have time for "nonsense."' His own native curiosity occupied him constantly on the trail, with observations of the herb and insect life, the geological dream that surrounded them, and the moon and stars from Chimney Rock. He measured the river and found it to be "exactly seven hundred ninety two rods wide." The bugs fascinated him -- the bluffs were full of "ant-hills...of small pebbles or gravel...Mingled with these were found, in different places, small Indian beads, which these insects had collected, to beautify and adorn their habitations, I say collected, for it cannot be supposed |