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Show Page 181 CHAPTER VIII GREAT FIRST CAUSE Orson's second British adventure came to an end, and he landed aboard the "Niagara" at Boston on March 23. Then came the slow spring voyage through the Gulf waters to New Orleans, thence to St. Louis, where he embarked for the upper Missouri. The interior was very dry - little rain and no snow throughout the winter; the drought at the "Camp of Israel" near Council Bluffs was making everyone uneasy. Orson arrived May 19 and immediately gathered the Saints for a meeting at the tabernacle in Kanesville; no sooner had he prayed for rain before the assembled emigrants, but it began to fall, copiously, the first good rainfall since the previous autumn. Here on the Iowa side he also met his son Milando, who was nearly two - the offspring of Mary Ann Merrill Pratt. Anxious to return to Britain and to continue his writing, he dealt quickly with the business that had called him home. He was to be a treasurer for the Perpetual Emigration Fund, and, along with Franklin D. Richards, responsible for $20,000 in paper certificates. Stock was held in deposit to redeem the paper "at any moment" - when Orson returned to Liverpool, he and Richards apparently allowed the borrowing to go too far, as by 1852 the P.E.F. found itself cash-depleted. Orson was perhaps too generous, but business considerations meant very little to.him in any case. By autumn he was returning once again, anxious to get back to his desk on the other side of the Atlantic. He was to repeat the round trip five more times before he died. |
