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Show Page 152 south-west we could see an extensive level prairie, some few miles 38 distant, which we though must be near the Lake." He retutmed and signaled the workmen toward their deliverance. Behind them, Clayton put up a whimsical sign on the road to prevent others from following the wrong track: "Pratt's Pass to avoid canyon." Rockwell had seen the main camp coming up within a few miles, and Orson pressed hard on the road through willows, wild rose and poplar, over the summit of Big Mountain. It was July 20. No frost the next morning, but a heavy dew. The fateful Orson welcomed his brother apostle, Erastus Snow, sent up from the Prophet's camp with instructions to head for the valley and start the seed as soon as possible. There were those multitudes who had to be fed through the winter, and the planting must begin immediately. Erastus, whose brothers had been baptized by Orson Pratt in Vermont sixteen years before, now loped up Little Mountain and then toward the valley with him, along a stream which they named "Last Creek." At the summit they nhdught they could see it, and they charged down into the rockmaple and aspen. By afternoon, the canyon finally narrowed behind a perilous hill, where the wagon-studsof Donner and Reed had carved a passage above the rocks. They ascended: "...from the top...a broad open valley, about 20 miles wide and 30 long, lay stretched out before us, at the north end of which the broad waters of the Great Salt Lake glistened in the sunbeams, containing high mountainous islands from 25 to 30 miles in extent. After issuing from the mountains among which we had been shut up for many days, and beholding in a moment such an extensive scenery open before us, we could not refrain from a shout of joy which almost involuntarily escaped from our lips the moment this grand and lovely scenery was within our view." 38 "Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna!" they shouted at the first sight of the long-sought place of refuge. The valley "of the Utah outlet," as Snow --"^ -•••- r.rao mr>rp than an alluvial basin bounded by the glistening, |