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The Garrick was a magnificent new packet ship,
the largest on the ocean, and this, her third crossing of the Atlantic, would be
exciting, a race [from New York] against the South America. The owner
of each ship had wagered ten thousand dollars that his vessel would reach
Liverpool, England, first. Saturday morning, July 1 [1837], Orson watched in
fascination as the ship's crew shouted and scurried, unfurling banks of huge
sails. The race began.
For Orson, sea travel proved the grand adventure he had
anticipated. Freedom from seasickness pleased him. He saw huge whales off the
shore of Newfoundland. The swelling and subsiding ocean reminded him of the
hills and valleys around Kirtland [Ohio]. And consistently, behind them, he saw
the billowing sails of the South America.
* * *
Before leaving New York City [1841, for his mission to
Jerusalem], Orson received an extraordinary gift. A man from Philadelphia found
him, handed him a purse, and said the gift had been sent by an anonymous
stranger. The stranger had heard Elder Hyde preach and was "[i]mpressed by
[his] intense earnestness . . . and his determination to fulfill the mission
assigned to him in spite of lack of money." The donor made one request,
that the Mormon pray for him on the Mount of Olives. Orson opened the purse, and
gold pieces glittered. In disbelief and overwhelming gratitude he picked up the
coins one by one, counting. The purse contained $200, a fortune. This brought
Orson's cash, after expenses so far, to $500. This would last far into his
remaining journey.
As long as Orson lived he supposed that the purse of
gold had been sent to him by a wealthy Jew in Philadelphia. After Orson's death
the truth became known to his family. The stranger, Joseph Ellison Beck, a
thirty year old farmer of moderate means, lived in Freehold Township, New
Jersey, across the river from Philadelphia. Orson's preaching touched his heart,
and he donated his savings.
* * *
In the distance, from the top of a rounded hill on the
winding road from Jaffa, "my natural eyes, for the first time beheld
Jerusalem," Orson wrote of Thursday, October 21, 1841. He forgot the
overpowering heat and the dusty road and the barren countryside. True to his
vision of nineteen months before, he saw far away the domes and towers and
square buildings, the tall slim trees, and the enclosing wall of his
destination. . . .
Tranquil, ready to pray and write Spirit-inspired words
[on the Mount of Olives], Orson found a secluded place and sat. "In solemn
silence," as he had seen in vision, he smoothed out paper in front of him,
dipped pen in inkwell, and began to write, offering, on this sacred day,
"to him who lives for ever and ever," this prayer:
* * *
Orson had journeyed eastward to gather funds for the
Saints. He left his Kanesville [Iowa] home December 9 [1847], and arrived in
Saint Louis "in 12 days from the Bluffs," he wrote. "But, Oh! to
ride on horseback on the prairies, facing a cold wind always, for 450 miles, I
will not comment upon it, neither how badly I was chaffed from the calf of the
leg to the highest seat of honor upon the saddle."
* * *
Orson received information [in early 1849] that between
600 and 1000 wagons were on their way overland toward Kanesville, headed
westward [to the California gold fields]. Anticipating the needs of the
travelers, and deciding that he, like his neighbors, might as well have goods to
sell to them, Orson placed a notice in his April 18 newspaper that in exchange
for the Guardian he would accept "[c]orn, potatoes, corn-meal,
flour, beans, beef, pork or bacon, butter[,] eggs, chickens, pigs, mutton,
lumber, oak or walnut wood, gold and silver coin or dust . . . if brought
soon."
Camping spots in and around and beyond Kanesville and
Council Point during the first two weeks of May became incredibly crowded and
widespread. Days in Kanesville became more hectic. Men by the dozens thronged
off the river boats at Council Point, their purses bulging with money to buy
outfits. Wagons and wagons and more wagons rolled into Kanesville, needing a
space to camp, their owners eager to buy last-chance supplies before their
two-thousand-mile journey across plains and mountains and deserts. Often,
because of the mass of animals and covered wagons in the streets, Orson had
difficulty walking from his home to the printing office. The deluge jammed
stores with men who had long lists of needs. Store clerks became exhausted. And
outside, each traveler wanted to pull his wagon up directly to the store's door.
A loaded wagon had a tight squeeze to move away through the clog of waiting
animals and vehicles. Besides items procured in the stores, the gold seekers
bought much from the area farmers, huge amounts to take with them, and corn to
keep their animals alive now.
* * *
Varied experiences continued [during a trip across the
plains that Orson and three companions made in 1850]. July 15 they saw a few
herds of buffalo. They chased, but killed none for meat. To make their fire they
used buffalo chips, dry buffalo dung the size of large plates. The blaze and
heat were good, but the ashes too many. The next day they saw thousands of
buffalo, the hills covered, an incredible sight. They still killed none, but
they overtook Brother Foot's company of Saints and were served buffalo meat.
They found it delicious, sweeter than beef. July 18 they had a terrible time
crossing a branch of the Platte. Quicksand kept miring the horses. The men
stowed their clothes in a wagon, to keep them dry, and doubled the teams. They
spent an hour leading the horses taking one wagon across the two miles of swift
current, deep to the men's chests. Then they led the teams back and got the
other wagon. All were exhausted.
* * *
Orson beheld astonishing scenery while traveling the
280 miles from Mormon Station [later Genoa, Nevada] to San Francisco [1855].
After their June 25 beginning, he and his companions spent three days covering
the first 80 miles: from Carson Valley, up to Daggett's Pass, down into Lake
Bigler Valley (later Tahoe), up to Johnson's Pass, and down the American River
to Placerville. Orson had never imagined that mountains could rise so straight
up, rock walls, reaching so high. The mules he and Judge Stiles and Marshal
Heywood rode had no trouble on the zigzag narrow rock ledge trails, but the
dizzying heights disquieted the men. In many places a slip of a mule's foot
would mean a plummet to death. Everything here had been created in superlatives.
Lake Bigler [Tahoe], high in the mountains between the two precipitous summits,
was spectacularly beautiful—serene, azure, and colossal. Even the pines grew to
heroic size. After the second summit and beyond the plateau, a rough and rapid
descent brought the men to Placerville.
Placerville, also called Hangtown, lay in gold country.
Orson had never thought he would be in gold country, amidst miles of hills and
valleys and streams from which men came and boarded the stagecoach to carry bags
of gleaming nuggets and dust to the mint in San Francisco.
* * *
In his snow-surrounded nest on the plateau west of the
"second summit" of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Orson expected death
during the bleak night of December 22-23, 1855. Numbness of mind and limb
increased, though he tried to combat sleep in his alternately warm and frigid
berth near his ebbing fire.
Toward dawn a new sensation enveloped him—comfort—when, incredulously, he felt the gentle touch of hands upon his
head. Afterward he was unsure whether his mortal eyes had opened or his
spiritual eyes only visualized, but the hands belonged to his mother. Lovingly,
concerned, she bent over him. And she spoke to him, who had last seen her when
he was seven years old. Her imploring words, "Get up, my boy! Go on, go
on!" quickened his heart and mind.
* * *
In Mount Pleasant [Utah], June 28, 1869, an unexpected
visitor, tall Black Hawk, approached Orson Hyde. Thin, obviously unwell, Black
Hawk wore a wide buckskin belt around his abdomen to protect the festering
bullet wound that had plagued him since the battle at Gravelly Ford in 1866. He
retained his intense dignity, however, and his "straight as an arrow"
stature. To Orson he announced his readiness for the peace meet he had requested
of Dimick Huntington "one moon" ago. Many Indians had gathered for the
occasion—thirty warriors "with their squaws and papooses numbering in all
from seventy-five . . . to a hundred"—and they were impatient. Accustomed
to this typical Indian behavior, and in spite of grim thoughts of "peace or
war, life or death" galloping across his consciousness, Orson spoke calmly.
He assured the Chief he would promptly set up a pow-wow.
* * *
"Orson Hyde was a Jew, wasn't he?" many
people ask, obviously expecting an affirmative answer. They expect an
affirmative answer because they see casual statements to this effect in Church
literature and in public literature.
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