OCR Text |
Show Page 163 by now. Young, on his part, manifested considerable confidence in Orson when he appointed him navigator of the advance company and delegated him to manage the pioneering when he himself had been too sick to move. There had been others among the first camp who could have taken over - Woodruff, Kimball, or the experienced frontiersmen Markham and Porter Rockwell. But it was certainly Young's tribute to Orson's abilities, as well as deference to his position in the ruling quorum that he was selected to lead the way to Zion. The early months of the year 1848 Orson spent in study and preparation for a new mission appointed him in December - he was to preach gathering to the British Saints. Nearly seven years had passed since he had left Liverpool, and in that time he had been excommunicated, burned out of his home, and endowed with four more wives; traversed the Oregon Trail both ways, and helped found a city. He would travel to Europe with a new, more radical perspective - it was time to get out of Babylon, to live the celestial law, and he was to be the messenger to the Old World of this new covenant. Preparations consumed much time, however, and the winter had the camp on its knees. Hundreds languished through the cold on potatoes and corn bread, a stopgap to death which came anyway for many, but Orson was, as usual, deep in his studies. On March 19, while the Omahas traded outside the tabernacle door for meal and chickens, Orson was inside shedding light for the hundreds in attendance "on the combination of the Intelligent atoms." His concern for the books which had been trundled across Iowa from the Nauvoo library brought action to provide their removal in several wagons on to Salt Lake. Orson now became head of the European Mission of the Mormon Church. On April 22 he was given his commission to proceed to England (now that the ice was gone), "to preach, publish, and superintend the immigration and |