TEXT: Possibly “Carnet”.

Phelps was probably talking about the Klamath River (generally spelled Klamet at this time) in Oregon and the mouth of the Colorado River in the Gulf of California. In his April 1844 letters to JS, Orson Hyde sketched out the route from Nauvoo to the “Um[p]qua and Clamet valleys in Oregon bordering on California.” At the 18 March 1845 meeting, the council discussed the Gulf of California as a potential gathering place; Brigham Young stated that “it was Josephs mind that the head of California Bay was the place for us.” (Letters from Orson Hyde, 25 and 26 Apr. 1844; Council of Fifty, “Record,” 18 Mar. 1845.)

TEXT: Possibly “Eagles”.

Probably a reference to Macbeth: “On Tuesday last, / A falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place, / Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at, and kill’d.” When quoting this line, antebellum Americans sometimes replaced the falcon with an eagle. In the play, the birds are a supernatural sign that nature is out of balance, with a lesser bird triumphing over a greater one. Phelps was likely making a comparison between a majestic eagle and a mousing owl, arguing that it would be unnatural for the former to yield to the latter. (Shakespeare, Macbeth, act 2, sc. 4, ll. 11–13, in Riverside Shakespeare, 1370; see, for example, Speech of Mr. Burges, of Rhode Island, 24; and Washington DC, 28 Dec. 1834, Letter to the Editor, Boston Courier, 1 Jan. 1835, [2].)

The Riverside Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Edited by G. Blakemore Evans, J. J. M. Tobin, Herschel Baker, Anne Barton, Frank Kermode, Harry Levin, Hallett Smith, and Marie Edel. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

Speech of Mr. Burges, of Rhode Island, on the Motion to Strike from the General Appropriation Bill the Salary Appropriated for the Minister to Russia. Delivered in the House of Representatives, February 3, 1831. Washington DC: Gales and Seaton, 1831.

Boston Courier. Boston. 1824–before 1855.