Through all this the pioneers found comfort in the thought that their
own suffering was the price of immunity from similar hardships their
friends at home, in following their trail, would otherwise have had to
pay. But the arrival of spring proved this a delusion. Before the warm
weather had made the earth dry enough for easy travel, messengers came
in from Nauvoo to overtake the party with fear-exaggerated tales of
outrage, and to urge the chief men to hurry back to the city that they
might give counsel and assistance there. The enemy had only waited until
the emigrants were supposed to be gone on their road too far to return
to interfere with them, and then renewed their aggressions.
The Mormons outside Nauvoo were indeed hard pressed, but inside the city
they maintained themselves very well for two or three months longer.
Strange to say, the chief part of this respite was devoted to completing
the structure of their quaintly devised but beautiful temple. Since the
dispersion of Jewry, probably, history affords us no parallel to the
attachment of the Mormons for this edifice.
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