HWGA 7

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Section 7 – Mr. Darby’s sixth trip to America (Sept. 7, 1874 to Aug. 9, 1875)

Arrives in Auburn, Maine, September 7, 1874, then to Boston by September 27th and in New York from November 1874 to February 1875. In February 1875 conferred with two Methodist ministers in Boston a whole afternoon on deliverance from sin, also many other ministers but with little result as they are occupied with perfectionism and Moody revivalism. In New York on April 6th. Hears of interest in Washington. Visits Vineland, New Jersey where there are about four, and then Philadelphia. He was overworked and ill at Boston, but he improved at Philadelphia.

At Chicago in May where he did some work in revising the hymnbook, also meeting Adventists, etc. Left about July 1st visiting Alton, St. Louis, and St. Joseph, where Mr. John Fiske Barnard, General Superintendent of the Kansas City St. Joseph & Council Bluffs Railroad) took him in his private car to Council Bluffs, where he slept (about August 1st). Then went by rail 96 hours to San Francisco. He writes, “Thence going on to Omaha my host at St. Joseph being superintendent of the rail, I had every advantage to Council Bluffs, opposite Omaha. There I slept and then had 96 hours in rail to San Francisco, getting out only to eat.

Everything went right, through mercy, and I, taking the sleeping cars, got on perfectly well to San Francisco, but such a desert I never went through. For 200 miles a plot of corn occasionally, then a few small herds of antelope, and then for some 1400 miles barrenness, occasionally prairie dogs and thin barrows, one wolf… not even grass, sage brush and bare ground, emigrant wagons from time to time. You rise to more than 8000 feet, the Sierra Nevada Woody mountains, some 1400 miles square, a desert called Rocky Mountains; at Salt Lake the Mormons by irrigation have some poor crops. I stayed a week or ten days in San Francisco.”

At San Francisco writes on August 9th, “I got here quite well, and with less fatigue than I thought, but so perpetual a desert for near 1500 miles, save the fir-trees of the Sierra Nevada, I never saw.”

From Auckland on September 16th he writes, “there is everywhere work to do… about 6000 miles by sea to Auckland, by Honolulu, but the most favorable voyage possible, through mercy, scarcely any sea, and faster than usual, the ship very steady, so that I worked on as usual. Some little opportunity of testimony though no preaching, so that I was thankful… I still doubt that I shall go on to Australia. It is a week or so farther, and their circumstances are not the same, but the Lord will graciously show.”

Later writes, “I was old perhaps to come out; I thought of doing so three years ago, but the steamers were suspended. Then Mr. Wigram came here, and I thought I would perhaps give up the long journey. But the brethren were always expecting a visit. Besides God had delivered them from a bad state, namely, false principles, and help and teaching were in a certain way necessary. So I came 4000 miles by land and 6000 miles on the ocean.”

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