Page:Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow monochrome.djvu/137

AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 111 feelings occupied my bosom. The gardens and fields in and around our new-born city, just emerging from nature's barrenness, through the faith, energy and the necessities of the exiled Saints, now struggling for subsistence, in a wild recess in the Rocky Mountains, were exchanged for the vast unbroken wilderness which lay spread out before us for a thousand miles.

If my mind still glanced onward, there was the storm}" main, and, in the far distant perspective, a land of strangers—the field of my mission. We were hastening farther and still farther from the mighty magnet—. But we knew that the work in which we were engaged was to carry light to those who sat in darkness and in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and our bosoms glowed with love and compassion toward them.

Some persons feared our horses were too enfeebled to bear us over the mighty plain; but when the snows began to fall, winds swept our pathway, and enabled us to pass without difficulty, while on our right and left the country was deeply covered for hundreds of miles.

One day, as we were taking our noontide meal, and our horses were quietly grazing on the prairie; the following thrilling scene occurred. A startling call resounded through our little camp, "To arms! to arms! the Indians are upon us!" All eyes were turned in the direction, and we beheld a spectacle, grand, imposing and frightful. Two hundred warriors, upon their furious steeds, painted, armed and clothed with all the horrors of war, rushing towards us like a mighty torrent. In a moment we placed ourselves in attitude of defence. But could we expect, with thirty men, to withstand this powerful host? Onward rushed the savage band with accelerated speed as a huge rock, loosened from the mountain's brow, dashes impetuously downward, sweeping, overturning, and burying everything in its course!

We saw it was their intention to crush us beneath the