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Show 156 Vancouver Island, Washington Territory, or Lower California. And one report that the Mormons would flee to Alaska nearly caused an international incident with the Russians. But despite all the speculation, it is doubtful that Brigham Young ever intended to leave the Territory of which he was governor. In the first place, to leave the mountain west would have been a breach of the prophecies. When the Mormons first settled in the Great Basin, they considered it the fulfillment of the prophecies of Isaiah. "It shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the tops of the mountains," went the prophecy.7 Another prophecy of Isaiah significant to Mormon theology was: "0 Zion, that bringest good tid-o ings, get thee up into the high mountain." Apostle Orson Pratt siezed upon this theme in several of his writings. "This prophecy the Saints are now fulfilling," he declared: they are moving by the thousands from various parts of the globe into the "high places of the earth," among the Rocky Mountains, where they are forming a prosperous settlement, elevated over four thousand feet above the level of the sea.... ...Zion has located herself according to the prediction of Isaiah 9 "in the high mountain," (4,300 feet above the sea level; )... And again Pratt declared the significance of the mountain country to the Saints: and this people, called Zion, will bring glad tidings, and be commanded, as Isaiah says, to "get up into the high mountain." It is certain, then, that Zion, or the kingdom, does not take its first origin in the mountains; but after having been built up, it is commanded to take its journey up to the mountains, and to be located in its appropriate position against 10 the time when it shall roll, as a stone, to smash the old Babylonish image. There were other prophecies, too, which Mormon leaders would have a dif- |