No. 43, Vol. XXV.

Price One Penny.

I have pleasure in penning you a brief sketch of President Brigham Young's recent visit to Cache county.

On Wednesday, the 19th ult., Presidents Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball and Daniel H. Wells, with portions of their families; Apostles John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Geo. A. Smith, Charles C. Rich and Franklin D. Richards; Joseph Young and John Van Cott, of the Presidency of the Seventies; Daniel Spencer and George B. Wallace, of the Presidency of this Stake of Zion, and other Elders and friends, left this city for Logan, where a Conference had previously been appointed to be held. The company halted for noon at Bishop Layton's Ward, where an excellent dinner had been provided for the whole company in the basement of the new meeting-house. The public schools of the Ward were assembled and waved their banners and sang songs of welcome to the Presidency. I noticed the mottoes inscribed upon four of the banners as I passed them; they were couched in the following words :

"Children of Zion," "Welcome President Young," "We are pleased to see you," and "Our Mountain Home."

In the afternoon we proceeded to Ogden, where we were kindly entertained for the night by President Farr, the family of Bishop West, Judge Farr, Elders McGaw, Hammond and Ballantyne, Capt. Brown and others."

Thursday we drove to Brigham city, Box Elder county, where we held meeting at 3 o'clock p.m. Presidents Young, Kimball and Wells preached on the life, the trials and blessings of the Saints.

When we started through Box Elder kanyon on Friday, I perceived that our company had increased in numbers at each settlement we had passed through, and, on examination, found it to be composed of 121 persons and 32 carriages.

Before reaching Wellsville, we were met by an escort of mounted men, who relieved the Box Elder escort and led the way into town, were, apparently, all the inhabitants had turned out to welcome the Presidency. I did not

This discourse was in every respect calculated to teach men how to live. Monday, the 24th, we turned about and started for home, reaching Brigham city about 3 o'clock. A meeting was held in the Court House. President Joseph Young gave a pleasing account of his first acquaintance with the fulness of the Gospel as revealed through Joseph Smith. President Kimball made a few remarks, instructing the people to lay up their grain against a time of famine; admonished them to be obedient to the counsels of the Priesthood. President Young followed upon the same subjects, and endeavored to show them the propriety of regulating the prices of the grain they raise, and making speculators pay a good price for all the grain they got

from them.

On Tuesday morning our company came to Ogden. A meeting was held at 3 p.m., in the Tabernacle, and the audience was addressed by President Wells, Elders Hiram B. Clawson, John T. Caine, William H. Folsom, John V. Long, George A. Smith, and then by Presidents Kimball and Young. At

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this meeting, which lasted nearly four hours, many important topics were treated upon. The President called upon the people to covenant to keep his counsel, and then told them that he wanted them to lay up grain for a time of scarcity; not to sell their wheat for less than two dollars a bushel, nor their flour for less than six dollars a hundred. He chastized the Bishops for neglect of duty, and for doing things which they had not been commanded to do.

The President and company returned to this city on Wednesday the 26th, calling at Farmington for dinner.

I will remark, in conclusion, that there is an increasing and praiseworthy desire among the brethren north to raise fruit. Elder Benson's fruitorchard is still two years in advance of any other in Logan, the opinion of some inexperienced men to the contrary notwithstanding. President Maughan and brother Gates have set out good orchards, but they are not yet in bearing, still their labors in this department are deserving of emulation.

Much has been said, and much more | has been written on the fallacies and fancies that have misled the million at various epochs of this world's history, until it has become a favorite theme with the lecturer and philosopher, to compare the superstition, credulity and ignorance of bye-gone days, with the descernment, enlightenment and intelligence of the present age. We are pointed to a time when the alchymist, with retort and crucible, would spend a lifetime and a fortune endeavoring to turn the baser metals into gold, to gain the favor of princes and the approbation of the masses, in his unavailing efforts to unravel the secrets of nature's vast laboratory, and instruct mankind in the mysteries of the great secret,-"How to get rich in a short time and with very little trouble or outlay." We are told of

the manias which raised articles of little worth to fabulous values; of the outcries against witches, wizards, cunning men and women; how whole populations would join in the crusade against poor creatures on the slightest. suspicion of their being acquainted with the "black arts," and would put them to the cruelest tortures to prove their guilt or innocence,-trials which now, in many cases, would simply excite our mirth at the utter ridiculousness of the means used to detect guilt, did we not recollect they brought acute suffering to the subjects of these unfounded suspicions. Again, we are asked, what can be our opinion of the condition of the masses who would readily purchase, in full faith of their virtue and renovating properties, such nostrums as "The elixir of youth," whose vendors promised that its all

potent qualities would give to the aged the strength and the beauty of their youthful days, or that, with still higher claims, accorded to its partakers immunity from pain, disease, and even death itself. Yet we are told all these things really existed and enjoyed the felicity of being popular.

But there are delusions more powerful than any of these, that still affect the minds of people in this day, notwithstanding the favorable comparisons that one-sided arguers exhibit as evidences of the superiority of the present to any previous generation; delusions that have existed "from the beginning" until now, of which we hear little, or, if mentioned, referred to so vaguely as to be of little or no benefit in clearing the error away. However, it is not now our intention to dispute the correctness of any religious doctrine, to controvert the theories of a favorite philosophy, or to argue on the justice of existing governmental regulations; with such, as far as they do not interfere with us, we have little to do; but there are some ideas which are still to be found lurking in the hearts of men, from which we have suffered, and of which we may speak.

Ever since the time when murderous jealousy took possession of the soul of Cain, and urged him to the commission of the deed that stains his name, and points to him as the first shedder of innocent blood on this fair earth, there has existed within the minds of those who neither loved truth nor practiced righteousness, an idea that by killing the teachers, practicers and lovers of Godlike principles, they could destroy the principles themselves; that if they slew the propagators of these doctrines, that they could no longer hear them, they would not be judged nor condemned thereby, but would have immunity in practicing what they loved best. To cite examples would be simply to take the history of the people of God in every age, and to narrate the story of their sufferings and persecutions. Yet, strange to say, all these evidences of the futility of opposing physical force as an argument against truth, have not had the desired effect in teaching the inhabitants of this world, who

live upon its surface to-day, that they, with such poor weapons, can do no more than their predecessors before them in overturning or destroying the truth.

One would almost think, from the variety of agencies brought to bear against the Saints of this age, that every possible means at the disposal of man had been used in the attempt to destroy them; yet such does not appear to be the case, as year after year some fresh idea is started which is proclaimed as sure to succeed in accomplishing the end, and pretexts have never been wanting, however false or frivolous, for putting the new idea into active operation. Mobs, carrying death, banishment and extermination as their mottoes and warcries; official proclamations of "peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must," drivings, plunderings, Indians, starvaion, grasshoppers, famine, internal dissension, and a grand American army, have all been heralded forth and echoed through creation as sure means to bring about the desired consummation; but all have come to naught, all have failed; and if these examples are to be taken as the most powerful arguments that can be brought to bear against Gospel truths, we cannot but pity those who use weapons so utterly inadequate to the task, and which, instead of injuring those they were intended to destroy, rebound with ten-fold force upon those who have wielded them. Still, the idea exists and flourishes in the hearts of men, all the examples of the past being insufficient to prove how delusive, how entirely incompatible with the assigned task are such instru ments; but observing how "the grain of mustard-seed" is becoming the mighty tree-a shelter and a retreat from the storms and desolations about to overspread the earth-those who desire not the advent of the kingdom, nor the reign of purity and truth, imagine any weapons are better than none, however miserably they may fall short of what is wanted.

One of old, whose wisdom has been greatly praised, on an occasion when the Apostles were taken before the Jewish Council for preaching the doctrines of the Everlasting Gospel,