History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

422 MISSIONS AND IMMIGRATION.
water, driving their cattle into a willow copse near
by, as to build a corral was impossible. The wind
freshened into a gale, and then into a hurricane, howling
incessantly for thirty-six hours, and drifting the
snow in every direction. For two nights women and
children lay under their frail covering, exposed to
the blast, with no food but a morsel of bread or biscuit.
Tents and wagon-tops were blown away, and
the wagons buried almost to the tops of their wheels
in the snow-drifts. No fires could be lighted; little
food could be had ; no aid was nigh ; and now, in this
wintry solitude, though within a few days' march of the
valley, the saints expected no other fate than to leave
their bodies a prey to the wolves and the vultures.
At length the storm abated, and making their way
toward the willow copse, the men found nearly half
their cattle lying stiff amid the snow-banks, while
others died from the effects of the storm. Not a
human life was lost, however, though in this neighborhood
many a grave was passed, some of friends
near and dear, some of gold-seekers, whose bodies
had been disinterred and half devoured by the wolves,
and some of their persecutors in Illinois and Missouri,
whose bones lay bleaching in the sun, a head-board
with name, age, and date of decease being all that
remained to mark their resting-place. 68
Until the year 1856 the poorer classes of emigrants
were supplied with ox-teams for the overland portion
of the trip, the total cost of the journey from Liverpool,
including provisions, never exceeding sixty dollars.
There were thousands of converts in Europe, however,
58 In a letter dated Muddy Fork—930 miles from Winter Quarters—Oct.
18, 1S49, and published in the Frontier Guardian, Dec. 20th, of that year,
George A. Smith writes: 'Among others we noticed at the South Pass of the
Rocky Mountains the grave of one E. Dodd, of Gallatin, Mo., died on the
19th of July last of typhus fever. The wolves had completely disinterred
him. The clothes in which he had been buried lay strewed around. His
under jawbone lay in the grave, with the teeth complete, the only remains
discernable of him. It is believed he was the same Dodd that took an active
part, and a prominent mobocrat, in the murder of the saints at Haun's Mills,
Mo. If so, it is a righteous retribution.'