As mentioned in the previous chapter, beginning in late June 1847, Elders John Taylor and Parley P. Pratt led a group of more than 1,500 Saints from Winter Quarters to the Salt Lake Valley. Describing the beginning of this journey, Elder B. H. Roberts wrote:
“It was late in the season for starting on such an expedition. It was too late for them to put in crops that season, even if they stopped far short of the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. They barely had provisions to last them a year and a half, and if their first crop failed, starvation must follow, for they would be from ten to fifteen hundred miles from the nearest point where food could be obtained. …
“They had their all upon the altar, including their wives and children, who must share their hardships and their fate. They knew not their destination, they entrusted all on a single venture, from which there was no chance of retreat. If they should fail to find a suitable location and raise a crop the first season, there was no getting provisions to them, nor them to provisions. They must succeed, or perish in the wilderness to which they had started.”
In spite of these perilous circumstances and the need to arrive in the Salt Lake Valley before the onset of winter, travel was halted each Sunday for observance of the Sabbath day. Elder Roberts continued, “Sunday was observed as a day of rest, religious services were held in each camp, and the stillness of the great wilderness of the west was broken by Saints singing the songs of Zion.” On 5 October 1847, the Taylor and Pratt companies safely arrived in the Salt Lake Valley and began the necessary preparations for winter.
For President John Taylor, the Sabbath was a day of worship, rest, and thoughtful recollection. He encouraged the Saints to “keep the Sabbath day holy, set it aside as a day of rest, a day of meeting together to perform your sacraments and listen to the words of life, and thus be found keeping the commandments, and setting a good example before your children.”
