Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/290

 282 CLYDE B. AITCHISON. organic matter on the bottoms of the Missouri and of its sluggish tributaries ; to the foul slime left by the rapid subsid- ence of a flood ; and to the turning of the virgin soil by the settlers. There were often not enough well to attend to the sick or bury the dead. Six hundred deaths occurred on the site of the present town of Florence. The plague raged several successive years, and from 1848 to 1851, on the Iowa side of the river, hundreds of Mormons died of it. During the autumn months, preparations were made to winter on the site of the present town of Florence, until the spring of 1847. They enclosed several miles of land, and planted all obtainable seed, and erected farm cabins and cattle shelters. They built a town on a plateau overlooking the river, their "Winter Quarters," and thirty-five hundred Saints lived there during the hard winter of 1846-7. Winter Quarters was a town of some size, consisting, in December, of five hundred thirty-eight log houses and eighty- three sod houses. The numerous and skillful craftsmen of the emigrants had worked all the summer and fall, under the incessant and energtic direction of Brigham Young. The houses they built were comfortable enough, but not calculated to stand the first sudden thaw or drenching rain. "The buildings were generally of logs," says the manu- script history of Young, "from twelve to eighteen feet long; a few were split, and made from linn and cottonwood timber ; many roofs were made by splitting oak timber into boards, called shakes, about three feet long and six inches wide, and kept in place by weights and poles; others were made of willows, straw and earth, about a foot thick ; some of puncheon. Many cabins had no floors ; there were a few dug-outs on the side hills the fire place was cut out at the upper end. The ridge pole was supported by two uprights in the center and roofed with straw and earth, with chimneys of prairie sod. The doors were made of shakes with wooden hinges and a string latch; the inside of the log houses was daubed with clay; a few had stoves." In October, the camp at Cutler Park was moved to Winter