| 208 grazing in the vast prairie range in summer, and feeding upon the bottoms in winter. The wild game is less plenty where man has commenced the cultivation of the soil than it is a little distance farther in the wild prairies. Buffalo, elk, deer, bear, wolves, beaver, and many lesser animals roam at pleasure. Turkeys, geese, swans, ducks, yea, a variety of the feathered race are among the rich abundance that graces the delightful regions of this goodly land of the heritage of the children of God. Nothing is more fruitful, or a richer stock-holder in the blooming prairies, than the honey bee; honey is but about twenty-five cents per gallon.
"The season is mild and delightful nearly three quarters of the year, and as the land of Zion, situated at about equal distances from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as from the Allegheny and Rocky Mountains, in the thirty-ninth degree of north latitude, and between the tenth and seventeenth degrees of west longitude. 3 It bids fair to become one of the most blessed places on the globe, when the curse is taken from the land, if not before. The winters are milder than in the Atlantic States, of the same parallel of latitude; and the weather is more agreeable, so that were the virtues of the inhabitants only equal to the blessings of the Lord, which he permits to crown the industry and efforts of those inhabitants, there would be a measure of the good things of life, for the benefit of the saints, full, pressed down and running over, even an hundredfold. The disadvantages here, like all new countries, are self evident, lack of mills and schools, together with the natural privations and inconveniences, which the hand of industry and the refinement of society with the polish of science overcome. But all these impediments vanish when it is recollected that the prophets have said concerning Zion in the last days how the glory of Lebanon is to come upon her; the fir tree, the pine tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of his sanctuary, that he may make the place of his feet glorious; where for brass he will bring gold, and for iron he will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron; and where the feast of fat things will be given to the just; yea, when the splendor
3 From Washington.
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