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Show CHAPTER II BROTHER CHILCOTT Mv zeal was no light whimsey of the moment. Upon taking leave of my new friends I returned to Omaha to at once set about the sale of my .Property and l.aw practice and the purchase of a Plams outfit. Bemg a newcomer to the town, I had no intimate friends to attempt to dissuade me from my rash venture. On the other hand I received a crudely written but fervent letter fr~m my cousin Amanda Chilcott,under date of August 14th, r856, in which she begged me to pay her a visit at Great Salt Lake Ctty. After recalling to my mind her great love for my mother and her affection for myself as a boy, !flY cousin stated that her husband was now a Htgh Priest and the Bishop of their ward. She added that he joined heartily in her invitation for me to. ~isit them, and that he predicted I would find conditions so favourable in Zion and would make so much money that I would surely decide to settle among the Saints. . . This warm-hearted reminder of my relabonsbtp to members of the Church-and a second visit with the Nevilles-so fired my zeal that I gladdened the heart of the Bishop in charge at Florence by paymg a full double-tithe of all my small fo;tune. After that I was promptly baptized and recetved the laymg on of hands, first for myself and then on behalf of my father. . h I had already driven my four span of oxen wtt . my heavily loaded wagon up to the camp of the Nevilles. The following day we trai,l,e d out of Florence on the THE MORMON LION dreary passage of the Great Plains, in the rear of the long train of toiling, plodding handcart people. But of that terrible journey I shall write barely enough to mhmate the tortures of hardships and starvation that all the many hundreds of our wretched party suffered. Terrible as were the privations of the party that preceded us, ours were still more frightful. An inkling of what was before us can be gamed from the fact that we started with scarcely room enough in the convoying wagons to carry the sick and infirm. From the firs t, even Mrs. Neville and Miss Lucy walked, as they had walked all the way across Iowa. I ~oon gave over attempting to dissuade them from thts when I realized the condition of the greater number of our fellow travellers. The small loads that the .foor handcart people were able to heap on thetr frat push carts were far too small to provide them even with the necessities of life, yet soon became more than burdensome to the ill-nourished foot travellers, who had to toil on day after day, week after week, month after month, over t he dreary desert plains. Many carts were hauled by women and girls alone. Other women walked with babes at their breast. All but the littlest children toddled along in the road together with aged grandfarents and other persons too feeble to push and hau at the carts. Long before we passed Fort Laramie there hardly was room in the wagons for the totally disabled. By that time we had been for weeks on short ratio!'s of flour and a little beef. Beyond the fort our condthon fast went from bad to worse. The rations were cut down, and we were reduced towards outright starvation. At the same time our worn oxen began to fail us, and we encountered t,he redoubled hardships of the rougher roads of the mountains and the cold of mid October in these high altitudes. Our way was now strewn with the graves of the |