are less than seven hundred miles distant from Fort Bridger, and to them he resolved to apply.  Captain Marcy was the officer selected to lead in the arduous expedition.  He had been previously distinguished in the service by a thorough exploration of the Red River of Louisiana.  Accompanied by only thirty-five picked men, all volunteers, and by two guides, he started for Taos, November 27th,—­an undertaking from which, at that season of the year, the most experienced mountaineers would have shrunk.  A party was dispatched at the same time to the Flathead country, in Oregon and Washington Territories, to procure horses to remount the dragoons, and to induce the traders in that region to drive cattle down to Fort Bridger for sale.

On the day of Captain Marcy’s departure, Governor Cumming issued a proclamation, declaring the Territory to be in a state of rebellion, and commanding the traitors to lay down their arms and return to their homes.  It announced, also, that proceedings would be instituted against the offenders, in a court to be organized in the county by Judge Eckels, which would supersede the necessity of appointing a military commission for that purpose.  This document was sent to Salt Lake City by a Mormon prisoner who was released for the purpose.  The Governor sent also, by the same messenger, a letter to Brigham Young, in which there were expressions that indicated a disposition to temporize.

The whole camp, at this time, was a scene of confusion and bustle.  Some of the stragglers around the tents were Indians belonging to a band of Pah-Utahs, among whom Dr. Hurt, already mentioned as the only Federal officer who did not abandon the Territory in the spring of 1857, had established a farm upon the banks of the Spanish Fork, which rises among the snows of Mount Nebo, and flows into Lake Utah from the East.  Shortly after the issue of Brigham Young’s proclamation of September 15th, the Mormons resolved to take the Doctor prisoner.  No official was ever more obnoxious to the Church than he; for by his authority over the tribes he had been able to counteract in great measure the influences by which Young had endeavored to alienate both Snakes and Utahs from the control of the United States.  On the 27th of September, two bands of mounted men moved towards the farm from the neighboring towns of Springville and Payson.  Warned by the faithful Indians of his danger, the Doctor fled to the mountains, and twenty Pah-Utahs and Uinta-Utahs escorted him to the South Pass, where he joined Colonel Johnston on the 23d of October.  It was an act of devotion which has rarely been excelled in Indian history.  The sufferings of his naked escort on the journey were severe.  They crossed the Green River Mountains, breaking the crust of the snow and leading their animals, being reduced at the time to tallow and roots for their own sustenance.  On the advance of the army towards Fort Bridger, they accompanied its march.