Diary of a Prairie Missionary       Part 2

July 1^st,  1835.    As the streams are at this season quite full, we had to follow the highlands which led us a circuitous route through a part of Schuyler, Adams, and Hancock Counties.  A great part of the country in this region is yet unsettled owing principally to the Military Claims. After a ride of fifty miles we succeeded in reaching Carthage ( the Co. town of Hancock) at dark, and, at the only tavern, we succeeded in obtaining lodgings, such as they were for our selves, but we could not procure a stable for our horses. We soon discovered that we were not among Kentuckians, by their spitting and betting & &

July 2^nd. We had to pay our landlord who was “from the East”, just double of what the Kentuckian demanded yesterday morning for precisely the same amount of accommodation.  After riding several miles we took breakfast at the house of a Tennesseean, where we had to attend in every way to our horses ourselves, and take their rough fare at fifty per cent above Kentucky price.  Indeed by this time, we knew almost precisely what our accommodations would be, if we could only learn where the person was from. At very few places could we find grain for our horses, and necessity often drove us under a roof which we would not have visited from choice, We today, following the "trail" over the extensive Prairies, passed through a part of Hancock, and McDonough, into Warren County. We crossed two or three Prairies, from 12 to 16 miles wide. About 12 miles South of Monmouth in Warren, we stopped to recruit our horses, where I received the melancholy intelligence, that one of our Elders elect was dead since I left the settlement, and the wife of the other, beside, another head of a family, and one of our members, a young woman recently from Ohio. There was with us no alternative but to proceed, as tomorrow had been set apart as a day of humiliation. On our journey we met some travellers who informed us that another of our members, and the head of a family was abandoned by the Doctor, and dying with Cholera. Into the midst of it we must go, and our sensations were not exactly of the most pleasant nature.  The path of duty however was before us, and consequences were with the Master. We consequently proceeded, and found it better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, for by sorrow the heart is made better. The word and promises of God were (now at least) pleasant, and not only were consolations drawn from the 91st Psalm, but also from the words Of  Christ the wisdom of God" - "Whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and be quiet for the fear of evil. I found it even so.  I believe that I was now less oppressed with fear, than I have sometimes been, when it, the cholera, was an hundred miles distant. As we reached the first family of our people the head of it was breathing his last. Under the fatigue of our journey we had still to proceed five miles to the house of Mr. Hugh Martin, having today performed a journey of 58, or 60, miles, and in a little over two days and an half 143 miles.  The excitement & alarm had now become general over the vicinity, and mens hearts seemed to fail them. Thin exercise of Divine Providence appeared to me mysterious, for our people, (with few exceptions) alone, were afflicted.  "It was (not) a chance which happened to us" an said the idolatrous Ekronites, for the inquiry is, "hath there been evil in the City, and the Lord hath not done it"?  It was to us all a solemn, and I hope a profitable time.