A Study in Scarlet by Conan Doyle

A Study in Scarlet by Conan Doyle

Author:Conan Doyle [Doyle, Conan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: detective
Publisher: http://english-e-books.net/
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00


PART TWO

In the Country of the Saints

CHAPTER ONE

The Mormons

In the centre of North America there is a large desert, which for a long time stopped people crossing the continent. No one could live in the desert, many people died trying to cross it to reach more fertile lands.

In the year 1847, a traveller stood on a rocky cliff, looking across this empty land. All he could see were the bones of other people who had tried to reach the West. The man was dying from hunger and thirst. With him he had a small child, a girl, who he was carrying in a blanket. They were the only ones left of a group of twenty-one people who tried to travel to a better life, the others, including the little girl's mother, were dead. The man's name was John Ferrier, and as the little girl had no one else, he adopted her, and called her Lucy Ferrier. John knew that if he did not find food and water soon, both of them would die.

But he was very tired. He and Lucy sat down on the cliff above the desert. Before long both of them were asleep.

In the distance there was a cloud of dust. The cloud became bigger as it got nearer, until it was clear that it was made by a large group of moving creatures. It was a huge group of carts, men and women, children, horses and animals, who were travelling across America to find a new place to live. One of the men saw Lucy and John, high up on their cliff. The great trail of wagons, men and women stopped while some of the men climbed up to see who they were. John Ferrier woke up and was shocked to see the empty desert now full of people and life. The men took the man and the little girl to the wagons.

'Who are you?' asked John Ferrier. 'There are so many of you.'

'There are nearly ten thousand of us,' said one of the young men. 'We're the Mormons.'

'Where are you going?' asked John Ferrier.

'We don't know. The hand of God is leading us through our Prophet. You must come before him. He'll decide what to do with you.'

The Prophet, a man called Brigham Young, was in a large, brightly painted wagon, with six horses pulling it. Lucy and John stood before him.

'If we take you with us,' he said, 'you must become believers in our religion. Will you do that?'

'I don't think we have a choice,' said Ferrier. 'If we stay here, we'll die.'

'Take them then, Brother Stangerson,' said the Prophet 'and give them food and drink. It's your job to teach these two the way of the Mormons. Now let's move on!'

After a long and difficult journey the group of Mormons arrived in Utah, where they built Salt Lake City. The Prophet gave each person a piece of land to farm and to build on. He gave the biggest pieces of land to the two Elders of the Mormon religion; their names were Stangerson and Drebber.



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