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Show 129 & garden seeds in proportions."-*' The company had been impeded by the heavy snow and had not departed Beaver until April 1.3° it was seventy miles through deep snow and mud to Cedar Springs for the rendezvous with Bean. This put them two days behind him. The Fillmore company came in right behind Low's men. The combined companies formed an expeditionary force of 104 men with fourteen horse and mule teams and about thirty ox teams.39 A survey of the personnel of this expedition shows the ages of the men varied greatly. In the face of necessity, it seems that Brigham Young's counsel to use "old men and boys" with a few "young and middle aged to go as explorers" was largely disregarded. Of course the very young and the very old were represented, tortimer W. Warner was barely sixteen when the expedition began, while others, like one Rhodes of Salt Lake City, was old enough to be called Father Rhodes by the members of the expedition. Many of these men, however, were directly from the ranks of the Nauvoo Legion. Of course the White Mountain Expedition was significantly more important now than it was in February, when the idea was first put into action. But the expedition was largely organized before the change in policy and Brigham Young's "Sebastopol" speech. The small settlements in the South, who made up the majority of the expedition, were severely pressed for manpower. Many of the men were absent in Salt Lake City forwarding wagons and teams to aid in the exodus; others were helping with the evacuation of San Bernardino; and still others were being enlisted by Amasa Lyman for his reconnaissance of the Colorado River. The White Mountain Expedition had to take what it could get. There was no room for any man to neglect his duty in southern Utah in the spring of 1858. The northern settlements were bearing the brunt of the military manpower needs, and those men evacuating Salt Lake were needed by their families to help them settle in Utah County and elsewhere. |