AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 101
The circumstance which we this day commemorate, will form a very important item in the history of succeeding ages. Two years ago this day, when President Brigham Young first entered this valley, he completed the most extraordinary expedition ever recorded in the annals of history.
There are sometimes small and seemingly trivial events in the life of man, with which every other period most naturally associates. There are circumstances in the history of nations, which seem as fulcrums, around which everything else revolves. But the period, the circumstance, the event which we now commemorate, is one with which is associated the interests of the world—the salvation of the whole human family.
What must be the feelings, this day, of President Young, the leader of that, noble band of Pioneers, while he contemplates the results of the last two years? Realizing the responsibility of his position as the head of a numerous people, persecuted and driven from their cherished homes, where their first leader and Prophet had sealed his mission with his blood; we say, what must have been his feelings when, with a little band, with barely necessaries sufficient to sustain life for a few months, and leaving their families nearly destitute, on lands claimed by faithless savages, he started forth into the wilderness in search of a home for his people, like Abraham of old, "not knowing whither he went?" But he knew that God had called him he—trusted in the arm of Omnipotence, and by the unseen hand of the Almighty Jehovah, their feet were directed across a trackless desert to this place. And who, fellow citizens, with the recollections of the past and the anticipations of the future, would attempt to describe the feelings that on this occasion fill the breasts of your aged fathers?
Soon, like the Patriarchs of old, we expect to be gathered to our fathers. Our bosoms swell with gratitude to the Most High, that after years of tossing to and fro, our feet are once
