VII. Third Week at Great Salt Lake City.--Excursions…

VII. Third Week at Great Salt Lake City.--Excursions

Governor Cumming had asked me to accompany Madam and himself to the shores of the lake, with an ulterior view to bathing and picnicking.

One fine morning, at 10 A.M., duly provided with the nécessaire and a thermometer--which duly snapped in two before immersion--we set out down the west road, crossed the rickety two-laned bridge that spans the holy stream, and debouched upon a mirage-haunted and singularly ugly plain. Wherever below the line of debordement of the lake’s spring freshet, it is a mere desert; where raised, however, the land is cultivable, from the Wasach Mountains to Spring Point, at the north of the Oquirrh, giving about eighty square miles of fertile land. The soil, as near the lake generally, is a thin layer of saline humus, overspreading gravel and pebbles. The vegetation is scattered artemisia, rose-bushes, the Euphorbia tuberosa and other varieties of milk-weed, the greasewood, salicornias, and several salsolaceæ. There are numerous salt deposits, all wet and miry in the rainy season; and the animals that meet the sight are the coyote, the badger, and the hideous Phrynosoma. A few blue cranes and sage-chickens, which are eatable till October, were seen; and during winter the wild-fowl are found in large flocks, and the sweet-water streams are stocked with diminutive fish. In contrast with the bald and shaven aspect of the plain, rose behind us the massive forms of the Wasach Mountains, robed in forests, mist-crowned, and showing a single streak of white, which entitles them to the poetical boast of eternal snow--snow apparently never being respectable without eternity.

After fifteen miles of good road we came to the Point o’ the Mountain--the head of the Oquirrh, also called West Mountain--where pyramidal buttes bound the southern extremity of the lake. Their horizontal lines are cleanly cut by the action of water, and fall in steps toward the plain. Any appearance of regularity in the works of Nature is always pleasing--firstly, because it contrasts with her infinite diversity; and, secondly, because it displays her grandeur by suggesting comparison with the minor works of mankind. Ranches and corrals, grass and cattle, now began to appear, and the entrance of a large cave was pointed out to me in the base of the buttes. We drove on, and presently emerged upon the shores of this “dead and desert”--this “still and solitary” sea. It has not antiquity enough to have become the scene of fabulous history; the early Canadian voyageurs, however, did their best to ennoble it, and recounted to wondering strangers its fearful submarine noises, its dark and sudden storms, and the terrible maelstrom in its centre, which, funnel-like, descended into the bowels of the earth. I believe that age is its only want; with quasi-lifeless waters, a balance of evaporation and supply--ever a mystery to the ignorant--and a horned frog, the Dead Sea of the New World has claims to preternaturalism at least equal to those of its sister feature, the volcano of depression, in the Old Hemisphere.

[MARE MORTUUM.]

The first aspect of Mare Mortuum was by no means unprepossessing. As we stood upon the ledge, at whose foot lies the selvage of sand and salt that bounds the wave, we seemed to look upon the sea of the Cyclades. The sky was light and clear, the water of a deep lapis-lazuli blue, flecked here and there with the smallest of white horses--tiny billows, urged by the warm soft wind; and the feeble tumble of the surf upon the miniature sands reminded me, with the first surveyor, “of scenes far, far away, where mightier billows pay their ceaseless tribute to the strand.” In front of us, and bounding the extreme northwest, lay Antelope or Church Island, rising in a bold central ridge. This rock forms the western horizon to those looking from the city, and its delicate pink--the effect of a ruddy carpet woven with myriads of small flowers--blushing in the light of the setting sun, is ever an interesting and beautiful object. Nearer, it has a brown garb, almost without a tinge of green, except in rare, scattered spots; its benches, broken by gashes and gullies, rocks and ravines, are counterparts to those on the main land; and its form and tintage, softened by the damp overhanging air, and contrasting with the light blue sky and the dark ultramarine streak of sea at its base, add greatly to the picturesqueness of the view. The foreground is a strip of sand, yellow where it can be seen, incrusted with flakes of salt like the icing of a plum-cake, and bearing marks of submergence in the season of the spring freshets. At the water’s edge is a broken black line of a peculiar drift, which stands boldly out from the snowy whiteness around. Where my sketch was taken I looked as through a doorway, whose staples were two detached masses of stone. On the right rose an irregular heap of conglomerate and sandstone, attached to the ledge behind, and leaning forward as if about to fall. On the left, the “Black Rock,” which can be seen as a dot from the city, a heap of flint conglomerate, imbedded in slaty, burnt, and altered clay, formed the terminating bluff to a neck of light sand and dark stone.

Before proceeding to our picnic, I will briefly resume the history and geography of this Mare Mortuum. The Baron de la Hontan, the French governor of Placentia, in Newfoundland, about 1690, heard from Indians of a Great Salt Water, which he caused to disembogue through a huge river into the South Sea or Pacific Ocean. Like the Lake Tanganyika, in Central Africa, it was arrayed in the garb of fable, 300 leagues of length, 30 of breadth, with “100 towns about it,” like Mr. Cooley’s highly imaginative “Zanganica,” and navigated in large boats by the savage Mozeemleks, who much remind one of the old semi-mythical “Mono-moezi.” Doubtless many a trapper and obscure trader has since that time visited it; a name or two has been found upon the adjacent rocks, but those were braves who, to speak metaphorically, lived before the age of Agamemnon. In 1845, Colonel Frémont, then engaged with his second expedition, made a partial flying survey, which, in 1849-50, was scientifically completed by Captain Howard Stansbury.

In geologic ages the lake occupied the space between the Sierra Madre on the east, and the ranges of Goose Creek and Humboldt River on the west. The length is roughly computed at 500 miles from north to south, the breadth from 350 to 500, and the area at 175,000 square miles. The waters have declined into the lowest part of the basin by the gradual upheaval of the land, in places showing thirteen successive steps or benches. A freshet of a few yards would submerge many miles of flat shore, and a rise of 650 feet would in these days convert all but the highest peaks of the surrounding eminences into islands and islets, the kanyons into straits, creeks, and sea-arms, and the bluffs into slightly elevated shores. Popular opinion asserts that the process of desiccation is going on at the rate of about half a mile in ten years. But the limits of beach and drift line laid down by Captain Stansbury are still well defined, and the shrinking of the volume may be ranked with its “sinking”--like the sink of the Humboldt and other rivers--an empirical explanation, by which the mountaineer removes the difficulty of believing that evaporation can drain off the supplies of so many rivers.

[THE GREAT SALT LAKE.]

The lake, which is about the size of the African Chad, occupies the northeastern corner of Utah Territory, and lies to the northwest of the Great Salt Lake Valley, which is forty miles long by about twelve in breadth. The major axis of the irregular parallelogram is sixty to seventy miles in length from north to south, by thirty to thirty-five from east to west. Its altitude has been laid down at 4200 feet above, while the Dead Sea of Palestine is 1300 feet below sea level. The principal influents, beginning from the north, are the Bear River, the Weber River, and the Jordan. They supply the balance of evaporation, which from water is greater, and from high lands is usually less, than the rain. The western side is a perfect desert--a salt and arid waste of clay and sand, with the consistence of mortar when wet, which can not boast of a single stream; even the springs are sometimes separated by “jornadas” of seventy miles. When the rivers are in flood, the lake, it is said, rises to a maximum of four feet, overflowing large tracts of level saline plain, winding between the broken walls of rock which surround it on all sides. Near its shores the atmosphere is reeking, bluish, and hazy, from the effects of active evaporation, and forms a decided change from the purity and transparency of the air elsewhere. Surveyors have observed that it is a labor to use telescopes for geoditic purposes, and that astronomical observations are very imperfect. The quantity of vapor is less, and evaporation has less tension and density from the surface of salt than of fresh water; here, however, the operation is assisted by sunheat sufficient to produce an aeriform state, and by a wind brisk enough to prevent the vapor accumulating over the surface.

The water of this remarkable feature, which so curiously reproduces the marvels of Judea, contains nearly one quarter of solid matter, or about six times and a half more than the average solid constituents of sea-water, which may be laid down roughly at three and a half per cent. of its weight, or about half an ounce to the pound.[179] The Dead Sea is its sole known superior. The specific gravity is 1·170, distilled water being 1·000; the North Atlantic, between latitude 25° N. and longitude 52° W. (G.), 1·020; and the Dead Sea, at 60° Fahrenheit, from 1·22742 to 1·130. The vulgar estimate of its saltness is exaggerated. I have heard at Salt Lake City of one bucket of saline matter being produced by the evaporation of three; and that meat can be salted, and corned beef converted into junk, after twelve or fourteen hours in the natural unevaporated brine. It is used without preparation by the citizens, who have not adopted the precautions recommended by Dr. Gale.[180] It is collected by boys, shoveled into carts at the points of the beach where the winds dash up the waves--forming a regular wind-tide--and is sold in retail at half a cent per pound, or two shillings per hundred pounds. The original basin of geological ages was, doubtless, as the shells have proved, fresh water. The saline substances are brought down by rain, which washes the soil and percolates through the rocky ledges, and by the rivers, which are generally estimated to contain from ten to one hundred grains of salt per gallon,[181] and here probably more, owing to the abundance of soda. The evaporation is, of course, nearly pure, containing but very minute traces of salts.

[179] “One hundred parts by weight were,” says Dr. Gale, “evaporated to dryness in a water-bath below the boiling-point, and then heated to about 300° of the thermometer, and retained at that heat till the mass ceased to lose any weight. It gave solid contents 22·422 (?), and consisted of

Chloride of sodium }In the {Chloride of sodium 97·80 (common salt) 20·196 }Abbé { „ „ calcium 0·61 Sulphate of soda 1·834 }Domenech’s { „ „ magnesium 0·24 Chloride of }work the {Sulphate of soda 0·23 magnesium 0·252 }analysis is{ „ „ lime 1·12 Chloride of }taken from { ------ calcium a trace }Col. { Total 100·00 ------ }Frémont: { Total 22·282(?)”}thus-- {

The waters of the Dead Sea give solid contents 24·580, and consist of

Chloride of sodium 10·360 „ „ calcium 3·920 „ „ magnesium 10·246 Sulphate of soda ·054 ------ Total 24·580

The strongest natural brine in the United States, according to Professor Beck, is that of the Syracuse Saline, New York, which contains 17·35 per cent. of chloride of sodium.

[180] “The salt water” (it is elsewhere called “one of the purest and most concentrated brines known in the world”) “yields about 20 per cent. of pure common salt, and about 2 per cent. of foreign salts; most of the objectionable parts of which are the chloride of lime and the chloride of magnesia, both of which, being very deliquescent, attract moisture from the damp atmosphere, which has the effect to moisten and partially dissolve the common salt, and then, when the mass is exposed to dry air or heat, or both, a hard crust is formed. I believe I have found a remedy for the caking, which is cheap and easily used. It consists in sprinkling over the salt obtained by the evaporation of the water, and heaped up in a bin or box containing a porous bottom of blankets or other like material, a cold solution of the salt as it is concentrated from the lake till crystals begin to be deposited. This concentrated brine, while it will dissolve none of the common salt, will dissolve all the chlorides of calcium and magnesium, and carry them down through the porous bottom, and thus leave the salt purer and better than any now found in our markets. For persons who are obliged to prepare temporarily the salt, as travelers passing through the country, the water of the lake, without concentration, may be used for washing out the deliquescent chlorides, sprinkling the heap of salt by a watering-pot at intervals of two or three hours during a single day, and allowing it to drain and dry at night, and be spread to the sun an hour or two the following morning.”

[181] “The Physical Geography of the Sea” (by Captain Maury), chap. ix., § 502, quoted from “Youmans’ Chemistry.”

It has been generally stated that the water is fatal to organic life. The fish brought down the rivers perish at once in the concentrated brine; but, according to the people, there is a univalve, like a periwinkle, found at certain seasons within the influence of its saline waves; and I observed, floating near the margin, delicate moss-like algæ. Governor Cumming mentioned his having seen a leaf, of a few inches in length, lined with a web, which shelters a vermicular animal, of reddish color, and about the length of the last joint of the little finger. Near the shore, also, mucilaginous matter, white, pink, and rusty, like macerated moss, adheres to the rocky bed, and lies in coagulated spots upon the sand. We may fairly doubt the travelers’ assertion that this Dead Sea contains no living thing; whereas neither animalculæ nor vestige of animal matter were, according to Lieutenant Lynch, detected by a powerful microscope in the waters of the Asphaltite Lake.

[ISLANDS IN GREAT SALT LAKE.]

The Great Salt Lake is studded with an archipelago of islands, which would greatly add to its charms were their size commensurate with its diminutive limits. These, beginning from the north, are,

1. Dolphin Island, so called from its shape, a knoll of rock and shoal near the northwestern end, surrounded by about three feet of water.

2. Gunnison’s Island, a large rock and small outlier, southeast of the former, and surrounded with water from nine to twelve feet deep.

3. Hat Island, southeast of Gunnison’s, the smallest of the isles, with a reef sunk about seven feet: it was probably part of the following, and is separated from it by a narrow channel nowhere more than six feet in depth.

4. Carrington Island, so named from the Mormon surveyor, a circular mass with a central peak: the water is from three to six feet deep on every side except the western and southwestern, which are shoals and shallows. It contains no springs, but is rich in plants and flowers, as the sego, also spelled sigo, seacoe, and segose (Calochortus luteus, an onion-like bulb or tuber about the size of a walnut, more nutritious than palatable, much eaten as a table vegetable by the early Mormons and the root-digging Indians, and even now by white men when half starved), a cleome, a malvastrum, a new species of malacothrix, and several others.

5. Stansbury Island, the second largest in the lake, an ovate mass, with a high central ridge, dome-shaped above, and rising 3000 feet, twenty-seven miles in circumference, and about twelve in length. During the dry season it is formed into a peninsula by a sand-bank connecting it with the lake’s western shore. Thus antelopes, deer, and coyotes pass over to browse upon the plants and to attack the young of the ducks, geese, plover, gulls, and pelicans, that make their homes upon the cliffs: it is also used for grazing purposes. The principal plants are a comandra, and sundry new species of heuchera, perityle, and stenactis. Fossils and shells are found in scatters.

6. Antelope, also called Church Island, because the stock of the Saints is generally kept there. Lying to the east and northeast of the preceding, and in shape an irregular and protracted conoid, it is the largest of the islands, sixteen miles long by six of extreme width, with a western ridge and an eastern line of broken peaks, which attain a maximum of 3000 feet above the lake and 7200 above sea level. It lies twenty miles to the northwest of the city, and the narrow passage between it and the opposite plain is fordable. This island is surrounded on the north by a tufa bed twelve feet deep; eastward by six feet of water; southeast and south by shoals; and westward by a deposit of black mud: the deepest sounding in the lake, thirty-five feet, is found between it and Stansbury Island. Off the northwestern coast is a rock, called, after its principal peculiarity, Egg Island: in the eastern cliff there is said to be a cave, described to resemble the Blue Grotto at Capri, which has been partially explored. Formerly there was a small pinnace on the “Big Shallow;” it has either been wrecked or broken up for fuel.[182] Antelope Island contains arid ravines and a few green valleys, besides a spring of pure water, and, being safe from Indians, it is much esteemed as a grazing-place.

[182] In the “Revue des Deux-Mondes” (April, 1861) we are told that, “Pendant l’été un petit bateau à vapeur fait un service régulier sur le Lac Salé.” Fresh proof, if it be required, how difficult, or rather how impossible, it is for any amount of talent or ingenuity in a reviewer to supply the want of actual eye-seeing information. The “Lac Salé” is not yet come.

7. Frémont Island, so named by Captain Stansbury from the first explorer, who called it, after the rude dissipation of a dream of “tangled wilderness of trees and shrubbery, teeming with game of every description that the neighboring region afforded,” “Disappointment Island.” The Mormons have preferred “Castle Island,” suggested by its mural and turreted peak, that rises above the higher levels. It lies north and northeast from Antelope Island, parallel with the mouth of the Weber River, and south of Promontory Point, the bluff termination of a rocky tongue which separates Bear-River Bay from the body of the lake. Its shape is a semilune, fifteen miles in circumference, abounding in plants, especially the Indian onion, but destitute of wood and water. Here, on the summit, Captain Frémont lost the “brass cover to the object-end of his spy-glass”--disdain not, gentle reader, these little reminiscences!--and Captain Stansbury failed to find the relic.

I was surprised by the want of freshness and atmospheric elasticity in the neighborhood of the lake: the lips were salted as by sea air, but there the similarity ended. We prepared for bathing by unhitching the mules upon the usual picnicking place, a patch of soft white sand between the raised shore of the lake and the water brink. The bank supplies a plentiful stream of water, potable, though somewhat brackish, bitter, and sulphurous: it shows its effects, however, in a clump of plants, wild roses, and the euphorbia of many names, silk-plant, vache à lait, capote de sacarte, and milk-plant. The familiar magpie prevented the solitude of the scene being too impressive. Here was also a vestige of humanity, a kind of “lean-to” of dry stone wall, with the bank for a back-bone: you might have ridden over it without knowing that it belonged to Mrs. Smith of Vermont, now departed, unless warned off by the sudden appearance of what your superior sagacity would have discovered to be a chimney.

[THE BATH IN THE GREAT SALT LAKE.]

The bathing-place is behind the Black Rock. The approach is first over the fine soft white sand, like that of the sea-shore, but shell-less, soppy where it receives the spring-water, and almost a quicksand near the lake. The foot crunches through caked and crusty salt-flakes, here white, there dark green, there dun-colored like bois de vache, and every where the reverse of aromatic, and sinks deep into the everlastingly wet sand below. This leads to the neck of broken, riven stone pavement, whose head is the Black Rock. As the lake is neared, the basalt-like surface becomes red and rusty, the points are diamonded by sparkling spiculæ, and in the hollows and crevices where the waters have dried to salt it gathers in the form of icy lumps. A dreadful shock then awaits the olfactory nerves. The black mud of peculiar drift before alluded to proves to be an aceldama of insects: banks a full foot high, composed of the larvæ, exuviæ, and mortal coils of myriads of worms, musquetoes, gnats, and gallinippers, cast up by the waves, and lining the little bay, as they ferment and fester in the burning sun, or pickle and preserve in the thick brine.[183] Escaping from this mass of fetor, I reached the farther end of the promontory where the Black Rock stood decorously between the bathing-place and the picnic ground, and in a pleasant frame of curiosity descended into the new Dead Sea.

[183] According to Mr. T. R. Peale (quoted by Captain Stansbury, Appendix C), “More than ⁹⁄₁₀ths of the mass is composed of the larvæ and exuviæ of the Chironomus, or some species of musqueto, probably undescribed.”

I had heard strange accounts of its buoyancy. It was said to support a bather as if he were sitting in an arm-chair, and to float him like an unfresh egg. My experience differs in this point from that of others. There was no difficulty in swimming, nor indeed in sinking. After sundry immersions of the head, in order to feel if it really stang and removed the skin, like a mustard plaster--as described--emboldened by the detection of so much hyperbole, I proceeded to duck under with open eyes, and smarted “for my pains.” The sensation did not come on suddenly; at first there was a sneaking twinge, then a bold succession of twinges, and lastly a steady, honest burning like what follows a pinch of snuff in the eyes. There was no fresh water at hand; so, scrambling upon the rock, I sat there for half an hour, presenting to Nature the ludicrous spectacle of a man weeping flowing tears. A second experiment upon its taste was equally satisfactory; I can easily believe, with Captain Stansbury, that a man overboard has little chance against asphyxiation; vox faucibus hœsit was the least that could be said concerning its effects upon my masticators. Those who try such experiments may be warned that a jug filled at the fresh spring is necessary in more ways than one. The hair on emersion is powdered like the plastered locks of the knights of flamingo-plush and bell-hanging shoulder-knots, and there is a clammy stickiness, which is exceedingly unpleasant. Salt, moreover, may be scraped from the skin--imaginative bathers have compared themselves to Lot’s wife--and the Ethiop, now prosaically termed “nigger,” comes out after a bath bleached, whitewashed, and with changed epidermis.

Notwithstanding the fumet from the kitchen of that genius loci whom I daurna name, we dined with excellent appetite. While the mules were being hitched to, I found an opportunity of another survey from below the Black Rock: this look-out station is sometimes ascended by those gifted with less than the normal modicum of common sense. The lands immediately about the lake are flat, rising almost imperceptibly to the base of abrupt hills, which are broken in places by soft and sandy barriers, irreclaimable for agriculture, but here and there fit for grazing; where springs exist, they burst out at too low a level for irrigation. The meridional range of the Oquirrh, at whose northern point we were standing, divides the Great Salt Lake Valley from its western neighbor Tooele or Tuilla, which in sound curiously resembles the Arabic Tawíleh--the Long Valley. It runs like most of these formations from north to south: it is divided by a transverse ridge declining westward, and not unaptly called Traverse Mountain, from Rush Valley, which again is similarly separated from Cedar Valley. From the point where we stood, the only way to Tooele settlement is round the north point of West Mountain, a bold headland, rugged with rocks and trees. Westward of Tooele Valley, and separated by a sister range to the Oquirrh, lies Spring Valley, so called because it boasts a sweet fountain, and south of this “Skull Valley”--an ominous name, but the evil omen was to the bison.

Bidding a long farewell to that inland briny sea, which apparently has no business there, we turned our faces eastward as the sun was declining. The view had memorable beauties. From the blue and purple clouds, gorgeously edged with celestial fire, shot up a fan of penciled and colored light, extending half way to the zenith, while in the south and southeast lightnings played among the darker mist-masses, which backed the golden and emerald bench-lands of the farther valley. The splendid sunset gave a reflex of its loveliness to the alkaline and artemisia barrens before us. Opposite, the Wasach, vast and voluminous, the store-house of storms, and of the hundred streams that cool the thirsty earth, rose in stern and gloomy grandeur, which even the last smile of day failed to soften, over the subject plain. Northward, to a considerable distance, the lake-lands lay uninterrupted save by an occasional bench and a distant swell, resembling the upper convexity of a thunder-cloud. As we advanced, the city became dimly discernible beyond Jordan, built on ground gently rising away from the lake, and strongly nestling under its protecting mountains. A little to its northeast, a thin white vapor, like the spray of a spouting whale, showed the direction of the Hot Springs: as time wore on it rolled away, condensed by the cooling air, like the smoke of a locomotive before the evening breeze. Then the prominent features of the city came into view, the buildings separated themselves from their neighbors by patches and shades of several green, the streets opened out their regular rows and formal lines; once more we rolled over Jordan’s rickety bridge, and found ourselves again in the Holy City of the Far West.

[TRIP TO CAMP FLOYD.]

The ultimate destination of the Judiciary whom I had accompanied was Carson Valley, in the Sierra Nevada, a distance of some hundreds of miles through a wild country where “lifting of hair” is by no means uncommon. The judge, though not a sucking diplomat, had greenly relied upon bona verba at Washington for transportation, escort, and other necessaries which would be easily procurable at Camp Floyd. It was soon found advisable to apply to the military authorities at the cantonment. The coach, as I have said, had ceased to run beyond Great Salt Lake City. In May, 1858, a contract had been made with Major George Chorpenning to transport mails and passengers--the fare being $120--from Utah to California, he receiving $130,000. This lasted till September, 1859, when the drivers, complaining that the road-agents charged with paying them for eighteen months had expended the “rocks” in the hells of San Francisco, notably evinced their race’s power of self-government by seizing and selling off by auction wagons and similar movable property. On the 20th of March, 1860, it came into the hands of the proprietors of the Eastern line, Messrs. Russell and Co., who ran a mail-wagon first to California, then to Camp Floyd, and lastly, on the 1st of June, finding their expenditure excessive, packed the mails on mules.[184] Single travelers were sometimes thus pushed through, starting on the Wednesdays, once a fortnight; for a party like ours such a proceeding would have been impossible. Consequently, the judge and I set out for Camp Floyd to see what could be done by “Uncle Sam” and his “eagles.”

[184] They carry 50 to 60 lbs.; and the schedule time to Placerville is sixteen days.

Mr. Gilbert--of the firm of Gilbert, Gerrish, and Co., general (Gentile) merchants--offered us seats in his trotting wagon, drawn by a fine tall pair of iron-gray mules, that cost $500 the twain, and were christened Julia and Sally, after, I believe, the fair daughters of the officer who had lately commanded the district. With a fine clear day and a breeze which veiled us with dust-hangings--the highway must be a sea of mud in wet weather--we set out along the county road, leading from the southeastern angle of the Holy City. Our route lay over the strip of alluvium that separates the Wasach Mountains from the waters of Jordan: it is cut by a multitude of streamlets rising from the kanyons; the principal are Mill Creek, Big Cotton-wood, Little Cotton-wood, Dry Cotton-wood, and Willow Creek. The names are translated from the Indians, and we saw from the road traces of the aborigines, who were sweeping crickets and grass-seed into their large conical baskets--among these ragged gleaners we looked in vain for a Ruth. Near Big Cotton-wood, where there is a settlement distant seven miles from the city, an English woman came across the fields and complained that she had been frightened by four Indian braves who had been riding by to bring in a stolen horse. The waters of the kanyons are exceedingly cool, sweet, and clear, and suggested frequent reference to a superior kind of tap which had been stored away within the trap. In proportion as we left the city, the sterility of the River Valley increased; cultivation was unseen except upon the margins of the streams, and the look of the land was “real mean.” In front of us lay the denticulated bench bounding the southern end of the valley.

After twenty miles from the city we reached a ranch on rising ground, near the water-gate of the Jordan. It was built at an expense of $17,000, and was called the Utah Brewery. Despite, however, the plenty of hop and barley, the speculation proved a failure, and the house had become a kind of mail-station. Between it and the river were a number of little rush-girt “eyes”--round pools, some hot, others cold--and said to be unfathomable; that is to say, from twenty to thirty fathoms deep. They related that a dragoon, slipping with his charger into one of them, found a watery grave, where a drier death might have been expected. At the ranch we rested for an hour, but called in vain for food. From the Utah Brewery, which is about half way, drivers reckon twenty-two miles to Camp Floyd, making a total of forty-two to forty-three miles between the head-quarters of the saint and the sinner, and we therefore looked forward to a “banian day.”

About noon we hitched to and proceeded to ascend Traverse Mountain, a ridge-like spur of the Wasach, running east and west. It separates the Valley of the Northern or Great Salt Lake from the basin of the Utah, or Sweetwater Lake, to the southward, and is broken through by the waters of Jordan. The young river--called Piya Ogwap, or the Big Water, by the Shoshonees--here rushes in a foaming shallow stream, that can barely float a dug-out, over a rocky, pebbly bed, in the sole of a deep but short kanyon, which winds its way through the cross range. The descent is about 100 feet in two miles, after which the course serpentines, the banks fall, and the current becomes gentle.

As we toiled up the Dug-way, the graded incline that runs along the shoulder of the mountain, we saw a fine back view of the Happy Valley through an atmosphere clear as that of the English littoral before rain. Advancing higher, we met, face to face, an ambulance full of uniform en route to the Holy City, drawn by four neat mules, and accompanied by strikers--military servants. We drew up, the judge was readily recognized, and I was introduced to Captains Heth, Clarke, and Gibson, and to Lieutenant Robinson. They began with an act of charity, supplying ham sandwiches to half-starved men, and I afterward spent pleasant evenings with them at Great Salt Lake City, and became Captain Heth’s guest at Camp Floyd. Their kindness and hospitality lasted to the end of my stay. After the usual “liquoring up,” they pointed to Ash Hollow, the depths below, where the Mormons had intended to make a new Thermopylæ. Promising to meet them again, we then shook hands and resumed our road.

The steep descent on the counterslope of Traverse Mountain disclosed to us the first sight of Utah Lake, which is to its sister what Carmel is to Lebanon. It was a soft and sunny, a placid and beautiful landscape, highly refreshing after the arid lands on the other side. A panorama of lake, plain, and river lay before us. On the east, south, and west were rugged walls and peaks of mountain and hill; and northward a broad grassy slope rose to the divide between the valleys of the Fresh and of the Salt Lake. From afar the binding of plain round the basin appeared so narrow that the mountains seemed to dip their feet into the quiet reservoir; and beyond the southern point the lone peak of lofty Nebo stood, to adopt the Koranic comparison, like one of the pins which fasten down the plains of earth. A nearer approach discovers a broad belt of meadow, rich alluvial soil, in parts marshy, and in others arable, wheat and root-crop flourishing in the bottom, and bunch-grass upon the acclivities. The breadth is greater to the west and south of the lake than in other parts. It is cut by many a poplar-fringed stream that issues from the tremendous gorges around--the American Fork, the Timpanogos[185] or Provo River, and the Spanish Fork. On the near side, beyond the winding Jordan, lay little Lehi, whose houses were half hid by black trees; and eastward of the Utah Water, dimly visible, was Provo City, on a plain watered by four creeks. Such were the environs of the Sea of Tiberias.

[185] From Timpa, a rock, and ogwabe, contracted to oge, a river, in the Yuta dialect. In English maps published as late as seven years ago, “Timpanogos” is applied to the Great Salt Lake! Provo or Provaux is the name of a Canadian trapper and trader, who in past times defeated with eighty men a thousand Indians, and was killed at the moment of victory. The Mormons call the City Provo, and Gentiles prefer as a “rile” Timpanogos.

[UTAH LAKE.]

The Utah Lake, another Judean analogue, derives its supplies from the western versant of the Wasach. It is in shape an irregular triangle, the southern arm forming a very acute angle. The extreme length is thirty miles, and the greatest breadth is fifteen. It owes its sweetness, which, however, is by no means remarkable, to its northern drainage, the Piya Ogwap, alias Utah Outlet, alias Jordan River. Near the shores the water soon deepens to fifteen feet; the bottom is said to be smooth, uniform, and very profound in places; but probably it has never been sounded. The bed, where it shows, is pebbly; a white, chalky incrustation covers the shallower bottom; shells, especially the fresh-water clam, are numerous upon the watery margin; the flaggy “Deserét weed” in the tulares is ten feet high,[186] and thicket is dense in places where rock does not occupy the soil. The western side is arid for want of influents; there is a “lone tree,” a solitary cotton-wood, conspicuous amid the grazing-ground of bunch-grass, sage, and greasewood, and the only inhabitants, excepting a single ranch--Evan’s--are, apparently, the Phrynosoma and the lizard, the raven and the jackass-rabbit. The Utah Lake freezes in December, January, and February. At these months the Jordan rolls down floes of ice, but it is seldom to be traversed on foot. In the flood season it rises two, and the wind tide extends to about three feet. It is still full of fish, which in former times were carried off in barrels. The white trout weigh thirty pounds. There are many kinds of mountain trout averaging three pounds, while salmon trout, suckers, and mudfish are uncommonly large and plentiful; water-snakes and “horsehair fish” are also found.

[186] Tulare is a marsh of bulrush (Scirpus lacustris), which is found extending over immense tracts of river valley in Western America. “Tooly” water, as it is pronounced, is that which is flavored or tainted by it.

After descending the steep incline we forded the Jordan, at that point 100 feet broad, and deep to the wagon-hubs. The current was not too swift to prevent the growth of weeds. The water was of sulphury color, the effect of chalk, and the taste was brackish, but not unpleasant; cattle are said to like it. The fording was followed by a long ascent, the divide between Utah Valley and its western neighbor Cedar Valley. About half way between the Brewery and the Camp is a station, held by a Shropshire Mormon, whose only name, as far as I could discover, was Joe Dug-out, so called, like the Watertons de Waterton, from the style of his habitation. He had married a young woman, who deterred him from giving her a sister--every Oriental language has a word to express what in English, which lacks the thing, is rudely translated “a rival wife”--by threatening to have his ears cut off by the “horfficers.” Joe, however, seemed quite resigned to the pains and penalties of monogamy, and, what was more to our purpose, had a good brew of porter and Lager-bier.

Having passed on the way a road that branches off to the old camp, which was deserted for want of water, we sighted from afar the new cantonment. It lies in a circular basin, surrounded by irregular hills of various height, still wooded with black cedar, where not easily felled, and clustering upon the banks of Cedar Creek, a rivulet which presently sinks in a black puddly mud. For a more thoroughly detestable spot one must repair to Gharra, or some similar purgatorial place in Lower Sindh. The winter is long and rigorous, the summer hot and uncomfortable, the alkaline water curdles soap, and the dust-storms remind one of the Punjaub. I lost no time in suggesting to my compagnon de voyage, Lieutenant Dana, as a return for his kindness in supplying me with a “Bayonet Exercise,” and other papers, our old campaigning habit of hanging wet canvas before every adit, and received the well-merited thanks of Madam. The hardest part of these hardships is that they are wholly purposeless. Every adobe brick in the place has been estimated to have cost a cent, as at Aden each cut stone was counted a rupee; and the purchase of lumber has enriched the enemy. In 1858 the Peace Commissioners sent by the supreme government conceded to the Mormons a point which saved the Saints. The army was not to be “located” within forty miles of Great Salt Lake City; thus the pretty sites about Utah Lake were banned to them, and the Mormons, it is said, “jockeyed” them out of the rich and fertile Cache Valley, eighty miles north of the head-quarters.

[CAMP FLOYD.]

A broken wall surrounds this horrid hole. Julia and Sally carried us in with unflagging vigor. We passed through Fairfield, less euphoniously termed Frogtown, the bazar of the cantonment on the other side of the creek. During the days when Camp Floyd contained its full complement of camp followers--5000 souls--now reduced to 100 or 200 men, it must have been a delectable spot, teeming with gamblers and blacklegs, grog-house-keepers and prostitutes: the revolver and the bowie-knife had nightly work to do there, and the moral Saints were fond of likening Frogtown to certain Cities of the Plains. Of late years it has become more respectable, and now it contains some good stores.

We removed from the wagon the mail-bags containing letters for the camp, and made ourselves at home with the hospitable Gilbert. On the next day, after “morning glory” and breakfast, we called upon the officer commanding the department, Colonel P. St. G. Cooke, of the 2d Dragoons, and upon the commandant of the cantonment, Lieutenant Colonel C. F. Smith. They introduced us to the greater part of the officers, and, though living in camp fashion, did not fail to take in the strangers after the ancient, not the modern, acceptation of the term. It is a sensible pleasure, which every military man has remarked, to exchange the common run of civilian for soldier society in the United States. The reveillé in the morning speaks of discipline; the guard-mounting has a wholesome military sound; there is a habit of ’tention and of saluting which suggests some subordination; the orderlies say “Sir,” not Sirree nor Sirree-bob. The stiffness and ungeniality of professionals, who are all running a race for wealth or fame, give way in a service of seniority, and where men become brothers, to the frankness which belongs to the trade of arms. The Kshatriya, or fighting caste, in the States is distinctly marked. The officers, both of the navy and the army, are, for the most part, Southerners, and are separated by their position from general society. The civilian, as was the case in England twenty years ago, dislikes the uniform. His principal boasts are, that he pays his fighting servants well, and that he--a militia-man--is far superior to the regular. A company of Cadets, called the Chicago Zouaves, during the summer of 1860, made a sensation throughout the land. The newspaper writers spoke of them in terms far higher than have been lavished upon the flower of the French army; even the military professionals were obliged to join in the cry. As a republican, the citizen looks upon a soldier as a drone. “I hate those cormorants,” said to me an American diplomat, who, par parenthèse, had made a fortune by the law, as he entered a Viennese café. L’arte della guerra presto s’ impara is his motto, and he evinces his love of the civilian element by giving away a considerable percentage of commissions in the army to those whose political influence enables them to dispense with the preparation of West Point.

[UNITED STATES MILITIA.]

I am here tempted to a few words concerning the cheap defense and the chief pride of the United States, viz., her irregular army. The opposite table shows the forces of the militia to be three millions, while the regular army does not number 19,000. The institution is, therefore, a kind of public, a writing, speaking, voting body, which makes itself heard and felt, while the existence of the regulars is almost ignored. To hint aught against the militia in the United States is sure seriously to “rile up” your civil audience, and Elijah Pogram will perhaps let you know that you can not know what you are talking about. The outspoken Britisher, despite his title and his rank as a general officer, had a “squeak” for his commission when, in the beginning of the volunteer mania, he spoke of the new levies as a useless body of men: it is on the same principle in the United States. Thus also the liberal candidate declares to his electors his “firm belief that, with all our enormous expenditure, the country had not felt itself secure, and straightway a noble arm of defense, springing unbought from the patriotism of the people, had crept into existence, forming a better shield for our national liberties than all that we had been able to buy with our mounds of gold.” (Cheers.) The civilian in the United States boasts of his military institutions, his West Point and his regular army, and never fails to inform a stranger that it is better paid than any force in Europe. On the other hand, he prides himself upon, as he is probably identified with, the militia.

MILITIA FORCE OF THE UNITED STATES.

General Abstract of the Militia Force of the United States, according to the latest Returns received at the Office of the Adjutant General.

+-----------------------+----+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | For| | General | Field | | | | the| General | Staff |Officers,| Company | |States and Territories.|Year|Officers.|Officers.| etc. |Officers.| +-----------------------+----+---------+---------+---------+---------+ |Maine |1856| 13 | 52 | 36 | 230 | |New Hampshire |1854| 11 | 202 | 119 | 895 | |Massachusetts |1859| 10 | 47 | 111 | 353 | |Vermont |1843| 12 | 51 | 224 | 801 | |Rhode Island |1858| 2 | 22 | 106 | 26 | |Connecticut |1858| 3 | 9 | 82 | 199 | |New York |1856| 93 | 299 | 1,531 | 5,495 | |New Jersey |1852| | | | | |Pennsylvania |1858| | | | | |Delaware |1827| 4 | 8 | 71 | 364 | |Maryland |1838| 22 | 68 | 544 | 1,763 | |Virginia |1858| | | | | |North Carolina |1845| 28 | 133 | 657 | 3,449 | |South Carolina |1856| 20 | 135 | 535 | 1,909 | |Georgia |1850| 39 | 91 | 624 | 4,296 | |Florida |1845| 3 | 14 | 95 | 508 | |Alabama |1851| 32 | 142 | 775 | 1,883 | |Louisiana |1859| 16 | 129 | 542 | 2,105 | |Mississippi |1838| 15 | 70 | 856 | 348 | |Tennessee |1840| 25 | 79 | 392 | 2,644 | |Kentucky |1852| 43 | 145 | 1,165 | 3,517 | |Ohio |1858| | | | | |Michigan |1854| 30 | 123 | 147 | 2,358 | |Indiana |1832| 31 | 110 | 566 | 2,154 | |Illinois |1855| | | | | |Wisconsin |1855| 15 | 8 | 215 | 904 | |Iowa | | | | | | |Missouri |1853| | 17 | 4 | 67 | |Arkansas |1859| 10 | 39 | 179 | 911 | |Texas |1847| 15 | 45 | 248 | 940 | |California |1857| 18 | 126 | 11 | 175 | |Minnesota |1859| | | | | |Oregon | | | | | | |Washington Territory | | | | | | |Nebraska Territory | | | | | | |Kansas Territory | | | | | | |Territory of Utah |1853| 2 | | 48 | 235 | |Territory of N. Mexico | | | | | | |District of Columbia |1852| 3 | 10 | 28 | 185 | | +----+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | Grand aggregate | | 515 | 2,374 | 9,884 | 38,687 | +-----------------------+----+---------+---------+---------+---------+

+-----------------------+------------+----------------+----------+ | | |Non-commissioned| | | | | Officers, | | | | Total | Musicians, | | | |commissioned|Artificers, and | | |States and Territories.| Officers. | Privates. |Aggregate.| +-----------------------+------------+----------------+----------+ |Maine | 340 | 73,248 | 73,552| |New Hampshire | 1,227 | 32,311 | 33,538| |Massachusetts | 521 | 157,347 | 157,868| |Vermont | 1,088 | 22,827 | 23,915| |Rhode Island | 156 | 16,555 | 16,711| |Connecticut | 293 | 51,312 | 51,605| |New York | 7,388 | 329,847 | 337,235| |New Jersey | | | 81,984| |Pennsylvania | | | 350,000| |Delaware | 447 | 8,782 | 9,229| |Maryland | 2,397 | 44,467 | 46,864| |Virginia | | | 150,000| |North Carolina | 4,267 | 75,181 | 79,448| |South Carolina | 2,599 | 33,473 | 36,072| |Georgia | 5,050 | 73,649 | 78,699| |Florida | 620 | 11,502 | 12,122| |Alabama | 2,832 | 73,830 | 76,662| |Louisiana | 2,792 | 88,532 | 91,324| |Mississippi | 825 | 35,259 | 36,084| |Tennessee | 3,607 | 67,645 | 71,252| |Kentucky | 4,870 | 84,109 | 88,979| |Ohio | | | 279,809| |Michigan | 2,858 | 94,236 | 97,094| |Indiana | 2,861 | 51,052 | 53,913| |Illinois | | | 257,420| |Wisconsin | 1,142 | 50,179 | 51,321| |Iowa | | | | |Missouri | 88 | 117,959 | 118,047| |Arkansas | 1,139 | 46,611 | 47,750| |Texas | 1,248 | 18,518 | 19,766| |California | 330 | 207,400 | 207,730| |Minnesota | | | 23,972| |Oregon | | | | |Washington Territory | | | | |Nebraska Territory | | | | |Kansas Territory | | | | |Territory of Utah | 285 | 2,536 | 2,821| |Territory of N. Mexico | | | | |District of Columbia | 226 | 7,975 | 8,201| | +------------+----------------+----------+ | Grand aggregate | 51,460 | 1,876,342 | 3,070,987| +-----------------------+------------+----------------+----------+

That writing, speaking, and voting have borne fruit in favor of the militia, may be read in the history of the Americo-Mexican War. The fame of the irregulars penetrated to Calcutta and China: it was stopped only by the Orient sun. But who ever heard of the regulars? The “newspaper heroes” were almost all militiamen, rangers, and other guerrillas: “keeping an editor in pay” is now a standing sarcasm. The sages of the Revolution initiated a yeomanry second to none in the world: they had, however, among them crowds of frontiersmen accustomed to deal with the bear and the Indian, not with the antelope and the deer. The Texan Rangers in later times were a first-rate body of men for irregular purposes, not to be confounded with the militia, yet always put forward as a proof how superior to the “sweepings of cities,” as the regular army was once called in the Senate, are the irregulars, who “never fire a random shot, never draw trigger till their aim is sure,” and are “here to-night and to-morrow are fifty miles off.” But the true modern militia is pronounced by the best authorities--indeed, by all who hold it no economy to be ill served, for any but purely defensive purposes, a humbug, which costs in campaigns more blood and gold--neglect of business is perhaps the chief item of the expenditure--than a standing army would. As a “Garde Nationale” it is quite efficient. When called out for distant service, as in the Mexican War, every pekin fault becomes apparent. Personally the men suffer severely from unaccustomed hardship and exposure; in dangerous climates they die like sheep; half are in hospital, and the other half must nurse them: Nature soon becomes stronger than martial law; under the fatigue of the march they will throw away their rations and military necessaries rather than take the trouble to carry them: improvident and wasteful, their convoys are timid and unmanageable. Mentally they are in many cases men ignoring the common restraints of society, profoundly impressed with insubordination, which displays equality, which has to learn all the wholesome duty of obedience, and which begins with as much respect for discipline as for the campaigns of Frederick the Great. If inclined to retire, they can stay at home and obtain double or treble the wages: not a few are driven to service by that enthusiasm which, as Sir Charles Napier well remarked, readily makes men run away. Their various defects make organization painfully slow. In camp they amuse themselves with drawing rations, target practice, asking silly questions, electing officers, holding meetings, issuing orders, disobeying orders, “’cussing and discussing:” the sentinels will sit down to a quiet euchre after planting their bayonets in the ground, and to all attempts at dislodging them the reply will be, “You go to ----, Cap.! I’m as good a man as you.” In the field, like all raw levies, they are apt to be alarmed by any thing unaccustomed, as the sound of musketry from the rear, or a threatened flank attack: they can not reserve their fire; they aim wildly, to the peril of friend and foe, and they have been accused of unmilitary cruelties, such as scalping and flaying men, shooting and killing squaws and children. And they never fail, after the fashion of such men, to claim that they have done all the fighting.[187]

[187] These remarks were penned in 1860; I see no reason to alter them in 1861.

Such is, I believe, the United States militia at the beginning of a campaign. After a reasonable time, say a year, which kills off the weak and sickly, and rubs out the brawler and the mutineer; when men have learned to distinguish the difference between the often Dutch courage of a bowie-knife squabble and the moral fortitude that stands firm in presence of famine or a night attack, then they become regulars. The American--by which I understand a man whose father is born in the United States--is a first-rate soldier, distinguished by his superior intelligence from his compeers in other lands; but he rarely takes to soldiering. There are not more than five of these men per company, the rest being all Germans and Irishmen. The percentage in the navy is greater, yet it is still inconsiderable. The Mexican War, as History writes it, is the triumph of the militia, whom old “Rough and Ready” led to conquest as to a “manifest destiny.”[188] On the other hand, the old and distinguished officer who succeeded General Taylor has occasionally, it is said, given utterance to opinions concerning the irregulars which contrast strongly with those generally attributed to him.

[188] And it will be remembered, the Mexicans were not Austrians or Russians.

[HATRED AND MURDER.--SERGEANT PIKE.--MR. HENNEFER.]

At Camp Floyd I found feeling running high against the Mormons. “They hate us, and we hate them,” said an intelligent officer; consequently, every statement here, as in the city, must be received with many grains of salt. At Camp Floyd one hears the worst version of every fact, which, as usual hereabouts, has its many distinct facets. These anti-Mormons declare that ten murders per annum during the last twelve years have been committed without punishment in New Zion, whereas New York averages 18-33. They attribute the phenomenon to the impossibility of obtaining testimony, and the undue whitewashing action of juries, which the Mormons declare to be “punctual and hard-working in sustaining the dignity of the law,” and praise for their “unparalleled habits of industry and sobriety, order, and respect to just rights.” Whatever objection I made was always answered by the deception of appearances, and the assertion that whenever a stranger enters Great Salt Lake City, one or two plausible Mormons are told off to amuse and hoodwink him. Similarly the Mormons charge the Christians with violent injustice. On a late occasion, the mayor of Springville, Mr. H. F. Macdonald, and the bishop were seized simply because they were Church dignitaries, on the occasion of a murder, and the former, after durance vile of months at Camp Floyd, made his escape and walks about a free man, swearing that he will not again be taken alive. In 1853, Captain J. W. Gunnison and seven of his party were murdered near Nicollet on Sevier River, twenty-five miles south of Nephi City. The anti-Mormons declare that the deed was done under high counsel, by “white Indians,” to prevent the exploration of a route to California, and the disclosures which were likely to be made. The Mormons point to their kind treatment of the previous expedition upon which the lamented officer was engaged, to the friendliness of his book, to the circumstance that an Indian war was then raging, and that during the attack an equal number of Yuta Indians were killed. M. Remy distinctly refers the murder to the Pahvant Indians, some of whom had been recently shot by emigrants to California.[189] The horrible “Mountain Meadow Massacre”[190] was, according to the anti-Mormons, committed by the Saints to revenge the death of an esteemed apostle--Parley P. Pratt--who, in the spring of 1857, when traveling through Arkansas, was knived by one Hector M‘Lean, whose wife he had converted and taken unto himself. The Mormons deny that the massacre was committed by their number, and ask the Gentiles why, if such be the case, the murderers are not brought to justice? They look upon Mr. P. P. Pratt’s proceeding--even in El Islam, the women of the infidels are, like their property, halal, or lawful to those who win them--as perfectly justifiable.[191] In February, 1859, occurred sundry disturbances between the soldiers and citizens at Rush Valley, thirty-five miles west of Great Salt Lake City, in which Mr. Howard Spencer, nephew to Mr. Daniel Spencer, a squatter, while being removed from a government reservation by First Sergeant Ralph Pike of the 10th Infantry, raised a pitchfork, and received in return a broken head. Shortly afterward the sergeant, having been summoned to Great Salt Lake City, was met in Main Street and shot down before all present. The anti-Mormons, of course, declare the deed to have been done by Mr. Spencer, and hold it, under the circumstances--execution of duty and summons of justice--an unpardonable outrage; and the officers assert that they could hardly prevent their men arming and personally revenging the foul murder of a comrade, who was loved as an excellent soldier and an honest man.[192] The Mormons assert that the “shooting” was done by an unknown hand; that the sergeant had used unnecessary violence against a youth, who, single-handed and surrounded by soldiers, had raised a pitchfork to defend his head, and that the provocation thus received converted the case from murder to one of justifiable homicide. In the month of June before my arrival, a Lieutenant Saunders and Assistant Surgeon Covey had tied to a cart’s tail and severely flogged Mr. Hennefer, a Mormon. The opposition party assert that they recognized in him the man who two years before had acted as a spy upon them when sitting in Messrs. Livingston’s store, and, when ordered to “make tracks,” had returned with half a dozen others, and had shot Dr. Covey in the breast. The Mormons represent Mr. Hennefer to be a peaceful citizen, and quiet, unoffending man, thus brutally outraged by tyrannical servants of government, and, moreover, prove for him an alibi from the original cause of quarrel. I have given but a few instances: all are equally contradictory, and tantas componere lites quis audet?

[189] See Translation, vol. i., p. 463.

[190] The following is the account of that affair, officially given, of course, by anti-Mormons: On the 4th or 5th of September, 1857, a large emigrant train from Arkansas, proceeding to California with horses, mules, and ox-wagons, conveying stores of clothing and valuables, was suddenly attacked near a spring at the west end of Mountain Meadow Valley. The Indians, directed by white men, cut off from water the travelers, who had fortified themselves behind the vehicles, which they filled with earth, and killed and wounded several. When the attacked party, distressed by thirst and a galling fire, showed symptoms of surrender, several Mormons, among whom the leaders, John D. Lee and Elder Isaac C. Haight, are particularly mentioned, approached them with a white flag, and by soft words persuaded them that if they would give up their weapons they should be safely forwarded to Panther Creek and Cedar City. The emigrants unwisely disarmed themselves, and flocked toward the spring. The work of murder and robbery began near a patch of scrub-oak brush, about one mile and a half from water. Between 115 and 120 adults were slain. Three emerged from the valley; of these, two were soon overtaken and killed, and the third was slaughtered at Muddy Creek, distant about fifty miles. One of the Mormons--the name has been variously given--is accused of a truly detestable deed; a girl, sixteen years old, knelt to him, imploring mercy; he led her away into the thicket--and then cut her throat. Seventeen children, aged from two months to seven years, were taken from the Indians by the whites, and were distributed among the several Mormon families in Cedar City, Fort Harmony, Santa Clara, etc. Of these, sixteen were recovered, and the seventeenth was found in the April of 1858. Mr. Jacob Forney, the late Superintendent of Indian Affairs, conducted the investigation on the part of the federal government; he reported that white men joined in the murder and the robbery. The Mormons of course deny, in toto, complicity with the Indians, and remark that many trains--for instance, to quote no others, the emigrants at Sublette’s Cut-off, Oregon, in August, 1858--have similarly suffered, and that they can not be responsible for the misfortunes which men who insult and ill-treat the natives bring upon themselves.

[191] The following is an extract from the “Millennial Star,” July 25th, 1857. The article is headed “More of the Assassination:” “We publish the following extract from a letter written by two gentlemen to the editor of a New York paper. The letter was dated Flint-Cherokee Nation, Arkansas, May 17th, 1857, and says that after Elder Pratt was arrested in the Indian country, he was ‘placed under a strong guard, and by a military escort conveyed in chains to the Supreme Court, Van Buren, Arkansas. The case being promptly investigated, and there being no evidence upon which a bill of indictment could be found, he was liberated on the 13th instant. Brother Pratt, being without arms, and without friends to protect him, and knowing that M‘Lean was thirsting for his blood, and that he had the aid of a mass of the corrupt, money-bought citizens of Van Buren, endeavored to make his escape on horseback, unmolested; but every road and passway being under strict watch, he did not succeed in getting far till his path was discovered. M‘Lean and half a dozen other armed fiends pursued him; and Brother Pratt being totally unarmed, they succeeded in killing him without being hurt. Two of the party in advance intercepted his road, and brought him to a halt, while M‘Lean and the others came up in the rear. M‘Lean discharged a six-shooter at him, but the balls took no effect: some passed through his clothes, others lodged in his saddle. The parties now being in immediate contact, M‘Lean stabbed him (both being on horseback) with a heavy bowie-knife twice under the left arm. Brother Pratt dropped from his horse, and M‘Lean dismounted, and probed the fatal wounds still deeper; he then got a Derringer from one of his aids, and, as Brother Pratt lay dying upon his back, shot him in the upper part of the breast, dropping the pistol by the side of the victim. The assassin then mounted his horse and fled. This occurred within a few steps of the residence of a farmer by the name of Wire. Two gentlemen, being at the house at the time, saw the whole affair, and have made oath to what they witnessed before a coroner’s jury. Brother Pratt survived the work of this assassin two hours and a half, and was enabled to tell those who came to his assistance who he was, that he had been murdered by a fiend for doing his duty, and gave full instructions as to what course should be pursued in interring his body, and the disposition of the means and property connected with his person. His instructions were fully attended to by Elder Higginson and Mrs. M‘Lean, who reached the place of his assassination the same evening. Those who saw his last moments state that Brother Pratt died without a murmur or a groan, and apparently without a pain, perfectly resigned to the will of Heaven. Brother Pratt told Elder Higginson, the morning after his arrest, that his enemies would kill him, and requested Elder Higginson to go through with this spring’s emigration to Utah, and carry the news of his death to the Church and his family. This Elder Higginson will do, the Lord helping. After perpetrating this heaven-daring deed, M‘Lean returned to Van Buren and made it known. After remaining in town several hours, and walking the streets with impunity, he was escorted by a number of citizens of Van Buren to the boat, and took his leave of the place. Verily we had long thought that the bloodthirsty mobocrats of Missouri and Illinois were without a parallel in the world, but we now yield the palm to the Church-going citizens of Van Buren, for they have proven to the world that they are a den of murderers and assassins.

GEORGE HIGGINSON. GEORGE CROUCH.’”

[192] On this occasion, Cedar Fort, a neighboring settlement, with cultivation, and a few huts, near Camp Floyd, was attacked at night by camp-followers (soldiers); a single calf was killed (the whole place was burned to the ground), and the damages speedily rose from a dozen to $10,000, claimed from Congress (which did not half repay the injury done).

Strongly disclaiming the idea that the officers who discussed with me the subject at Camp Floyd had any tendency to exaggeration or to set down aught in malice, and quite conscious, as they never failed to remark, that a stranger is allowed to see only the beau côté of the New Faith, I can not but think that their views are greatly warped by causes external to it. This is to be expected. Who, after the massacre of Cawnpore, would have admitted into his mind a shadow of excuse for Nana Sahib? Among so many, however blinded and fanatic, and however fond of polygamy--this is ever the first reproach--there must be some good men. Yet from the “chief impostor” to the last “acolyte,” all are represented to be a gang of miscreants. The Mormons are far more tolerant; they have praise for those Gentiles, even federal officers, who have abstained from injuring them. They speak well of Lieutenant Colonel E. J. Steptoe, 9th Regiment of Infantry, and the officers of his force;[193] of General Wilson, afterward the Navy Agent at San Francisco; and of the present commandant, Colonel Cooke. They have nothing to say against Judge Reed, or Mr. John J. Kinney, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; and when Judge Leonidas Shaver died in 1855, they put the papers in mourning, and buried the Gentile in their cemetery. They do not abuse even their merchant rivals. Mr. J. B. Kimball, to mention no other, is generally praised and trusted. But when they find it necessary or advisable to take away a man’s character, they can do it, “and no mistake.” At the same time, their tolerance and discipline are, to say the least, remarkable. Judge Brocchus,[194] to quote but one, would run the risk of being torn to pieces in almost any fanatical meeting in Europe.

[193] Mr. Hyde (chap. vi.) gives the official document in which these officers petitioned President Pierce to reappoint Mr. Brigham Young as Governor and Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Utah Territory, and it speaks volumes in praise of the much-abused Saints.

[194] Chap. vi.

[“BOSTON.”]

At Camp Floyd I was introduced to Colonel G. H. Crossman, Department Quarter-master General, and Major Montgomery of the same department; to Dr. Porter, who was uncommonly and unnecessarily shy upon the subject of a “sick certificate;” and to Lieutenant N. A. M. Dudley, when we passed many a merry time over “simpkin.” It is hardly necessary to say that the judge, having no authority to demand, did not obtain either escort or carriage. Colonel Cooke frankly told him that he had neither men nor conveyance at liberty, and even if they were that he could not exceed orders. The Secretary of War is ready to “be down” upon such offenses, and in the United States Army probably more officers throw up the service from distress for leave than in the English army. It was clear that we must travel without the dignities, so we inspected an ambulance and a four-mule team, for which the Hungarian refugee, its owner, asked $1000--but little beyond its worth. After an exceedingly satisfactory day in a private sense, I passed the evening at Captain Gove’s, and watched with astonishment the game of Boston. Invented by the French prisoners in the islands of the American Liverpool, and abounding in “grand misery,” “little misery,” and other appropriate terms, it combines all the difficulties of whist, écarté, piquet, brag, and cribbage, and seems to possess the same attractions which beam upon the mind of the advanced algebraic scholar. Fortunately there was an abundance of good commissariat whisky and excellent tobacco, whose attractions were greater than that of Boston. On the morrow, a gloomy morning, with cold blasts and spatters of rain from the southwest, and the tameness of the snow-birds--which here represent

“Cock Robin and Jenny Wren, God Almighty’s cock and hen”--

warned us that the fine season was breaking up, and that we had no time to lose. So, inspanning Julia and Sally, we set out, and after six hours reached once more the City of the Saints.

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Chapter VIII

Excursions continued.

[COTTON-WOOD KANYON.]

I had long been anxious to visit the little chain of lakes in the Wasach Mountains, southeast of the city, and the spot where the Saints celebrate their “Great Twenty-fourth of July.” At dinner the subject had been often on the carpet, and anti-Mormons had informed me, hinting at the presence of gold, that no Gentile was allowed to enter Cotton-wood Kanyon without a written permit from the President Prophet. Through my friend the elder I easily obtained the sign manual; it was explained to me that the danger of fires in a place which will supply the city with lumber for a generation, and the mischievousness of enemies, were at the bottom of the precaution. Before starting, however, two Saints were chosen to accompany me, Mr. S----, and Mr., or rather Colonel, Feramorz, popularly called Ferry, Little. This gentleman, a partner, relative, and connection of Mr. Brigham Young, is one of the “Seventies;” of small and spare person, he is remarkable for pluck and hardihood, and in conjunction with Ephe Hanks, the Danite, he has seen curious things on the Prairies.

A skittish, unbroken, stunted, weedy three-year-old for myself, and a tall mule for my companion, were readily lent by Mr. Kennedy, an Irish Gentile and stock-dealer, who, being bound on business to California, was in treaty with us for reward in case of safe-conduct. We chose the morning of the 14th of September, after the first snow had whitened the peaks, and a glorious cool, clear day it was--a sky diaphanous, as if earth had been roofed with rock crystal. While awaiting the hour to depart under the veranda of the hotel, Governor Cumming pointed out to me Bill Hickman, once the second of the great “Danite” triumvirate, and now somewhat notorious for meddling with Church property. He is a good-looking fellow, about forty-five, rather stout and square, with high forehead, open countenance, and mild, light blue eye, and owns, I believe, to only three deaths. On the last Christmas-day, upon occasion of a difficulty with a youth named Lot Huntingdon, the head of the youngster party, he had drawn his “bowie,” and a “shooting” took place, both combatants exchanging contents of revolvers across the street, both being well filled with slugs, and both living to tell the tale.

“Do you know what that fellow is saying to himself?” asked the governor, reading the thoughts of a fiercely frowning youth who swaggered past us.

I confessed to the negative.

“He is only thinking, ‘D--d gov’rnor, wonder if he’s a better man than me,’” said my interlocutor.

About 4 P.M. we mounted and rode out of the city toward the mouth of the kanyon, where we were to meet Mr. Little. Passing by the sugar-mills and turning eastward, after five or six miles we saw at a distance a block of buildings, which presently, as if by enchantment, sank into the earth; an imperceptible wave of ground--a common prairie formation--had intervened. From the summit of the land we again sighted the establishment. It is situated in the broad bed of a dry fiumara--which would, by-the-by, be a perilous place in the tropics--issuing from Parley’s Kanyon. The ravine, which is sometimes practiced by emigrant trains, is a dangerous pass, here and there but a few rods wide, and hemmed in by rocks rising perpendicularly 2000 feet. The principal house was built for defense, the garden was walled round, and the inclosure had but two small doors.

We were met at the entrance by Mr. Little, who, while supper was being prepared, led us to the tannery and the grist-mill, of which he is part proprietor. The bark used for the process is the red fir, costing $25 per cord, and the refuse is employed in composts. The hides are received unsalted; to save labor, they are pegged to soak upon wheels turned by water-power. The leather is good, and under experienced European workmen will presently become cheaper than that imported from England.

Beyond the tannery was an adobe manufacture. The brick in this part splits while burning, consequently the sun-dried article is preferred; when the wall is to be faced, pegs are driven into it to hold the plaster. The material is clay or silt from the creek, puddled with water, and if saltish it is better than sweet soil; unity of color and formation are the tests of goodness. Each brick weighs, when dry, 16 lbs., and the mould is mostly double. On the day after making they are stacked, and allowed to stand for two months; the season is June, July, and August, after which it becomes too cold. The workman is paid 75 per cent.; 400 per diem would be tolerable, 700 good work; thus an able-bodied bricklayer can make twenty-one shillings a day--rather a contrast to the wages of an unfortunate laborer in England.

[EVERY CHILD A RELATIVE.]

Returning home, we walked through Mr. Little’s garden, and admired its neatness. The fruit-trees were mostly barren; in this year the city sets down a loss of $100,000 by frost. I tasted, for the first time, the Californian grape, “uvas admodum maturas, ita voluit anni intemperies;” they not a little resembled the northern French. A single vine sometimes bears $100 worth. There was a little rhubarb, but it is not much used where sugar costs forty-five cents per pound. After supping with Mr. Little, his wife and family, we returned to the andronitis, and prepared for the night with a chat. The principal point illustrated was the curious amount of connection caused by polygamy; all men, calling each other brothers, become cousins, and it is hardly possible, among the old Mormons, to stop a child in the street without finding that it is a relative. I was surprised at the comfort, even the luxury, of a Mormon householder in these remote wilds, and left it with a most favorable impression.

At the dawn of the next day we prepared to set out; from the city to the mouth of the kanyon the distance is about thirteen, and to the lakelets twenty-seven miles. Mr. Little now accompanied us on horseback, and his son James, whom I may here safely call a boy, was driving a buck-board. This article is a light gig-body mounted upon a thin planking, to which luggage is strapped; it can go where a horse can tread, and is easier to both animals than riding down steep hills. The boy, like Mormon juveniles generally, had a great aptitude at driving, riding, and using the axe; he attended a school, but infinitely preferred that of Nature, and showed all the disposition to become the father of a stout, brave Western man. As in the wilder parts of Australia, where the pedagogue has less pay than the shepherd, “keep a school” is here equivalent to semi-starvation; there is no superstitious aversion, as the Gentiles have asserted, to a modicum of education, but the state of life renders manual labor more honored and profitable. While the schoolmaster gains $2 50 per mensem, a ditcher would make the same sum per diem. Besides impatience of study, the boys are ever anxious to become men--“bring up a child and away it goes,” says the local proverb--and literature will not yet enable a youth to marry and to set up housekeeping in the Rocky Mountains.

Our route lay over the bench; on our right was a square adobe fort, that had been used during the Indian troubles, and fields and houses were scattered about. Passing the mouth of Parley’s Kanyon, we entered the rich bottom-land of the Great Cotton-wood, beautified with groves of quaking asp, whose foliage was absolute green, set off by paper-white stems. After passing through an avenue of hardheads, i.e., erratic granite boulders, which are carted to the city for building the Temple, we turned to the left and entered the mouth of the kanyon, where its sides flare out into gentler slopes.

A clear mountain stream breaks down the middle. The bed is a mass of pebbles and blocks: hornblende; a white limestone, almost marble, but full of flaws; red sandstone, greenstone, and a conglomerate like mosaic-work. The bank is thick with the poplar, from which it derives its name; willow clumps; the alder, with its dry, mulberry-like fruit; the hop vine, and a birch whose bark is red as the cherry-tree’s. Above the stream the ravine sides are in places too steep for growth; as a rule, the northern is never wooded save where the narrowness of the gorge impedes the action of the violent south winds. On the lower banks the timber is mostly cleared off. Upon the higher slopes grow the mountain mahogany and the scrub maple wherever there is a foot of soil. There is a fine, sturdy growth of abies. The spruce, or white pine, rises in a beautifully regular cone often 100 feet high; there are two principal varieties of fir, one with smooth light bark, and the other, which loves a higher range, and looks black as it bristles out of its snowy bed, is of a dun russet. Already appeared the splendid tints which make the American autumn a fit subject “pictoribus atque poetis.” An atmosphere of blue seemed to invest the pines; the maple blushed bright red; and the willow clumps of the bed and the tapestry of ferns had turned to vegetable gold, while snow, bleached to more than usual whiteness by intervals of deep black soil, flecked the various shade of the poison hemlocks and balsam firs, and the wild strawberry, which the birds had stripped of fruit.

[GREAT COTTON-WOOD KANYON.]

Great Cotton-wood Kanyon, like the generality of these ravines in the western wall of the Wasach, runs east and west till near the head, when it gently curves toward the north, and is separated from its neighbor by a narrow divide. On both sides the continuity of the gap is cut by deep jagged gullies, rendering it impossible to crown the heights. The road, which winds from side to side, was worked by thirty-two men, directed by Mr. Little, in one season, at a total expense of $16,000. After exhausting Red Buttes, Emigration, and other kanyons, for timber and fuel, Great Cotton-wood was explored in 1854, and in 1856 the ascent was made practicable. In places where the gorge narrows to a gut there were great difficulties, but rocks were removed, while tree-trunks and boughs were spread like a corduroy, and covered over with earth brought from a distance: Mormon energy overcame every obstacle. It is repaired every summer before the anniversary festival; it suffers during the autumn, and is preserved from destruction by the winter snows. In many places there are wooden bridges, one of which pays toll, and at the end of the season they become not a little rickety. As may be imagined, the water-power has been utilized. Lines and courses carefully leveled, and in parts deeply excavated, lest the precious fluid should spread out in basins, are brought from afar, and provided with water-gates and coffer-dams. The mills are named after the letters C, B, A, D, and lastly E. Already 700,000 square feet of lumber have been cut during this summer, and a total of a million is expected before the mills are snowed up; you come upon these ugly useful erections suddenly, round a sharp turn in the bed; they have a queer effect with their whirring saws and crash of timber, forming a treble to the musical bass of the water-gods.

We halted at the several mills, when Mr. Little overlooked his accounts, and distributed stores of coffee, sugar, and tobacco. After the first five miles we passed flecks of snow; the thermometer, however, in the shade never showed less than 60° F. In places the hill sides were bald from the effect of avalanches, and we saw where a house had lately been swept away. In others a fine white limestone glistened its deception. After passing Mill D, we debouched upon the basin also called the Big Prairie, a dwarf turfy savanna, about 100 yards in diameter, rock and tree girt, and separated from Parley’s Kanyon on the north by a tall, narrow wall. We then ascended a slope of black, viscid, slippery mud, in which our animals were nearly mired, with deep slush-holes and cross-roots: as we progressed the bridges did not improve. On our left, in a pretty grove of thin pines, stood a bear-trap. It was a dwarf hut, with one or two doors, which fall when Cuffy tugs the bait from the figure of 4 in the centre. These mountaineers apparently ignore the simple plan of the Tchuvash, who fill up with corn-brandy a hollow in some tree lying across “old Ephraim’s” path, and catch him dead drunk. In many places the quaking-asp trunks were deeply indented with claw-scars, showing that the climbing species is here common. Shortly before, a bear had been shot within a few miles of Great Salt Lake City, and its paws appeared upon the hotel table d’hôte.

About mid afternoon we dismounted, and left our nags and traps at Mill E, the highest point, where we were to pass the night. Mr. Little was suffering from a severe neuralgia, yet he insisted upon accompanying us. With visions of Albano, Killarney, and Windermere, I walked up the half mile of hill separating us from Great Cotton-wood Lake. In front rose tall pine-clad and snow-strewed peaks, a cul de sac formed by the summit of the Wasach. We could not see their feet, but instinct told me that they dropped around the water. The creek narrowed to a jump. Presently we arrived at a kind of punch-bowl, formed by an amphitheatre of frowning broken mountains, highest and most snowy on the southeast and west, and nearly clear of snow and trees on the east. The level ground, perhaps one mile in diameter, was a green sward, dotted with blocks and boulders, based on black humus and granite detritus. Part of it was clear, the rest was ivy-grown, with pines, clumps, and circlets of tall trees, surrounded by their young in bunches and fringes, as if planted by the hand of man. There were signs of the last season’s revelry--heaps of charcoal and charred trunks, rough tables of two planks supported by trestles, chairs or rail-like settles, and the brushy remnants of three “boweries.” Two skulls showed that wolves had been busy with the cattle. Freshly-caught trout lay upon the table, preserved in snow, and in the distance the woodman’s axe awoke with artful sound the echoes of the rocks.

At last we came upon the little tarn which occupies the lowest angle, the western ridge of the punch-bowl or prairie basin. Unknown to Captain Stansbury, it had been visited of old by a few mountain-men, and since 1854 by the mass of the Mormons. According to my informants it is the largest of a chaplet of twelve pools, two to the S.W. and ten to the S.E., which are probably independent bulges in the several torrent beds. Some are described as having no outlet, yet all are declared to be sweet water. The altitude has not been ascertained scientifically. It is roughly set down between 9500 and 10,000 feet. It was then at its smallest--about half a mile long by one quarter broad. After the melting of the snow it spreads out over the little savanna. The bottom is sandy and gravelly, sloping from ten to twenty feet deep. It freezes over in winter, and about 25-30 May the ice breaks up and sinks. The runnel which feeds it descends from the snow-capped peak to the south, and copious supplies trickle through the soppy margin at the base of the dripping hills around. The surplus escapes through a head to the north, where a gated dam is thrown across to raise the level, and to regulate the water-power. The color is a milky white; the water is warm, and its earthy vegetable taste, the effect of the weeds that margin it, contrasts with the purity of the creek which drains it. The fish are principally mountain trout and the gymnotus eel. In search of shells we walked round the margin, now sinking in the peaty ground, then clambering over the boulders--white stones that, rolled down from the perpendicular rocks above, simulated snow--then fighting our way through the thick willow clumps. Our quest, however, was not rewarded. After satisfying curiosity, we descended by a short cut of a quarter of a mile under tall trees whose shade preserved the snow, and found ourselves once more in Mill E.

[FELLING TREES.]

The log hut was of the usual make. A cold wind--the mercury had fallen to 50° F.--rattled through the crannies, and we prepared for a freezing night by a blazing fire. The furniture--two bunks, with buffalo robes, tables and chairs, which were bits of plank mounted on four legs--was of the rudest. I whiled away the last hours of light by adding to my various accomplishments an elementary knowledge of felling trees. Handling the timber-axe is by no means so simple a process as it appears. The woodman does it by instinct; the tyro, who is always warned that he may easily indent or slice off a bit of his leg, progresses slowly and painfully. The principal art is to give the proper angle to the blade, to whirl the implement loosely round the head, and to let it fall by the force of its own weight, the guiding hand gliding down the haft to the other, in order not to break the blow. We ate copiously; appetite appeared to come by eating, though not in the Parisian sense of the phrase--what a treasure would be such a sanitarium in India! The society was increased by two sawyers, gruff and rugged men, one of whom suffered from ophthalmia, and two boys, who successfully imitated their elders.

[INDEPENDENCE DAY.]

Our fireside chat was sufficiently interesting. Mr. S---- described the ceremonies of the last Mormon Independence Day. After the preliminaries had been settled as below,[195] the caravans set out from the Holy City. In 1860 there were 1122 souls, 56 carriages, 163 wagons, 235 horses, 159 mules, and 168 oxen. They bivouacked for the night upon the road, and marched with a certain ceremony. The first President issued an order allowing any one to press forward, though not at the expense of others; still no one would precede him; nor would the second advance before the third President--a good example to some who might want teaching. Moreover, the bishops had the privilege of inviting, or, rather, of permitting the people of their several wards, even Gentiles, to attend. The “pioneers”--the survivors of the noble 143 who, guided by their Joshua, Mr. Brigham Young, first attempted the Promised Land--were distinguished by their names on banners, and the bands played lustily “God save the King,” and the “Star-spangled Banner,” “Happy Land,” and “Du-dah.” At six on the fine morning of the 24th, which followed ugly weather, a salute of three guns, in honor of the First Presidency, was fired, with music in the intervals, the stars and the stripes floating on the top of the noblest staff, a tall fir-tree. At 9 A.M. a salute of thirteen guns, denoting the age of New Zion, and at 6 P.M. twelve guns, corresponding with the number of the apostles, were discharged with similar ceremonies. The scene must have been lively and picturesque around the bright little tarn, and under the everlasting hills--a holiday crowd, with wagons and ambulances drawn up, tents and marquees pitched under the groves, and horse-races, in which the fair sex joined, over the soft green sward. At 10 P.M., after the dancing in the boweries had flagged, the bands finished with “Home, sweet Home,” and the Saints returned to their every-day occupations.

[195] Extract from the Great Salt Lake correspondent of that amiable and conscientious periodical, the “New York Herald.”

“The Great Twenty-fourth of July.

“In my last I gave your readers a full account of the Mormon demonstrations on the anniversary of American independence. That done, they have now before them the celebration of their own independence. Adhesiveness is largely developed in the Mormon cranium. They will hold on to their notions. On the 24th of July, 1847, Brigham, at the head of the pioneers, entered this now beautiful valley--then a barren wilderness. Forgetful of the means that forced them here, the day was set apart for rejoicing. They laid aside the weeds of mourning, and consecrated the day to feasting and dancing. The Twenty-fourth is the day of deliverance that will be handed down to generations when the Fourth is immeasurably forgotten. Three years ago, two thousand persons were congregated at the head-waters of Big Cotton-wood, commemorating independence, when messengers from the East arrived with the intelligence that the troops were on the plains. I need not farther allude to what was then said and done; suffice it, things have been so disjointed since that Big Cotton-wood has been left alone in solitude. Setting aside the restraint of years, it seems that the faithful are to again enjoy themselves. The following card tells the marching orders; the interstices will be filled up with orations, songs, prayers, dances, and every kind of athletic game that the young may choose to indulge in:

“Twenty-fourth of July at the Head-quarters of Big Cotton-wood.--President Brigham Young respectfully invites ---- to attend a picnic excursion to the lake in Big Cotton-wood Kanyon, on Tuesday, the 24th of July.

“Regulations.--You will be required to start so as to pass the first mill, about four miles up the kanyon, before twelve o’clock on Monday, the 23d, as no person will be allowed to pass that point after two o’clock P.M. of that day. All persons are forbidden to smoke segars or pipes, or kindle fires at any place in the kanyon, except on the camp-ground. The bishops are requested to accompany those invited from their respective wards, and see that each person is well fitted for the trip with good, substantial, steady teams, wagons, harness, hold-backs and locks, capable of completing the journey without repair, and a good driver, so as not to endanger the life of any individual. Bishops, heads of families, and leaders of small parties will, before passing the first mill, furnish a full and complete list of all persons accompanying them, and hand the same to the guard at the gate.

“Committee of Arrangements.--A. O. Smoot, John Sharp, L. W. Hardy, A. Cunningham, E. F. Sheets, F. Kesler, Thomas Callister, A. H. Raleigh, Henry Moon. J. C. Little, Marshal of the Day; Colonel R. T. Burton will arrange the Guard.

“Great Salt Lake City, July 10, 1860.”

[FREE-MASONRY.--MORALITY.--TOLERANCE.]

Mr. Little also recounted to us his experiences among the Indians, whom he, like all the Mormons, firmly believed to be children of Israel under a cloud. He compared the medicine lodge to a masonic hall, and declared that the so-called Red Men had signs and grips like ourselves; and he related how an old chief, when certain symbolic actions were made to him, wept and wailed, thinking how he and his had neglected their observances. The Saints were at one time good masons; unhappily they wanted to be better. The angel of the Lord brought to Mr. Joseph Smith the lost key-words of several degrees, which caused him, when he appeared among the brotherhood of Illinois, to “work right ahead” of the highest, and to show them their ignorance of the greatest truths and benefits of masonry. The natural result was that their diploma was taken from them by the Grand Lodge, and they are not admitted to a Gentile gathering. Now heathens without the gate, they still cling to their heresy, and declare that other masonry is, like the Christian faith, founded upon truth, and originally of the eternal Church, but fallen away and far gone in error. There is no race, except perhaps antiquaries, more credulous than the brethren of the mystic craft. I have been told by one who may have deceived himself, but would not have deceived me, that the Royal Arch, notoriously a corruption of the Royal Arras, is known to the Bedouins of Arabia; while the dairy of the Neilgherry Todas, with its exclusion of women, and its rude ornamentation of crescents, circles, and triangles, was at once identified with the “old religion of the world whose vestiges survive among all people.” But these are themes unfit for an “entered apprentice.” Mr. Little corroborated concerning the Prairie Indians and the Yutas what is said of the settled tribes, namely, that the comforts of civilization tend to their destruction. The men, enervated by indoor life for half the year, are compelled at times to endure sudden privation, hardship, and fatigue, of which the results are rheumatism, consumption, and fatal catarrhs. Yet he believed that the “valleys of Ephraim” would yet be full of them. He spoke freely of the actualities and prospects of Mormonism. My companions asserted with truth that there is not among their number a single loafer, rich or poor, an idle gentleman or a lazy vagabond, a drunkard or a gambler, a beggar or a prostitute. Those honorable professions are membered by the Gentiles. They boasted, indeed, of what is sometimes owned by their enemies, that there are fewer robberies, murders, arsons, and rapes in Utah than in any other place of equal population in the world. They held that the laws of the United States are better adapted to secure the happiness of a small community than to consolidate the provinces of a continent into one huge empire, and they looked confidently forward to the spread of Mormonism over the world. They claimed for themselves, like other secessionists, “le droit sacré d’insurrection,” against which in vain the Gentiles raged and the federal government devised vain things. They declared themselves to be the salt of the Union, and that in the fullness of time they shall break the republic in pieces like a potter’s vessel. Of Washington, Jefferson, and the other sages of the Revolution they speak with all respect, describing them as instruments in the hand of the Almighty, and as Latter-Day Saints in will if not in deed. I was much pleased by their tolerance; but tolerance in the West is rather the effect of climate and occupation than of the reasoning faculty. Gentiles have often said before me that Mormonism is as good as any other religion, and that Mr. Joseph Smith “had as good a right to establish a Church as Luther, Calvin, Fox, Wesley, or even bluff King Hal.” The Mormons are certainly the least fanatical of our faiths, owning, like Hindoos, that every man should walk his own way, while claiming for themselves superiority in belief and politics. At Nauvoo they are said to have been puffed up by the rapid growth of their power, and to have been presumptuous, haughty, insolent, and overbearing; to have assumed a jurisdiction independent of, and sometimes hostile to, the nine counties around them and to the States; to have attached penalties to speaking evil of the Prophet; and to have denied the validity of legal documents, unless countersigned by him who was also mayor and general. They are certainly changed for the better in these days. With respect to their future views, the anti-Mormons assert that Saints have now been driven to the end of their tether, and must stand to fight or deliver; that the new Territory of Nevada will presently be a fatal rival to them; that the States will no longer tolerate this theocratic despotism in the bosom of a democracy; and that presently they must be wiped out. The Mormons already discern the dawning of a brighter day. In the reaction which has taken place in their favor they fear no organized attack by the United States on account of lobby influence at Washington, and the vis inertiæ inherent in so slow and unwieldy a body as the federal government. They count upon secession, quoting a certain proverb touching conjunctures when honest men come in. They believe that the supernatural aid of God, plus their vote, will presently make them a state. “Some time this side of the great millennium” they will realize their favorite dream, restoration (which might indeed happen in ten years) to their quondam Zion--Independence, Mo., the centre of the old terrestrial Paradise. Of this promised land their President said, with “something of prophetic strain,” “while water runs and grass grows, while virtue is lovely and vice hateful, and while a stone points out a sacred spot where a fragment of American liberty once was”--Lord Macaulay’s well-known Zealander shall apparently take his passage by Cunard’s--“I or my posterity will plead the cause of injured innocence, until Missouri makes atonement for all her sins, or sinks disgraced, degraded, and damned to hell, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” Then shall the Jews of the Old World rebuild the Temple of Solomon, and the Jews of the New World (the Mormons) recover their own Zion. Gog and Magog--that is to say, the kings of the Gentiles--and their hosts shall rise up against the Latter-Day Saints, who, guided by a prophet that wields the sword of Laban, shall mightily overthrow them at the battle of Armageddon. Then the spears, bows, and arrows (probably an abstruse allusion to the descendants of our Miniés and Armstrongs) shall be burned with fire seven years; the earth and its fullness shall be theirs, and the long-looked-for millennium shall come at last. And as prophecy without date is somewhat liable to be vague and indefinite, these great events are fixed in Mr. Joseph Smith’s Autobiography for the year of grace 1890. Meantime they can retire, if forbidden the Saskatchewan River and Vancouver’s Island, to the rich “minerales” in “Sonora of the Gold Mountains.”

[THE “GAUGE OF PHILOSOPHY.”--MISSIONARIES.]

On the morning of the next day, Sunday, the 16th of September, we mounted and rode slowly on. I had neglected to take “leggins,” and the loss of cuticle and cutis was deplorable. Once at the Tabernacle was enough: on this occasion, however, non-attendance was a mistake. There had been a little “miff” between Mr. President and the “Gauge of Philosophy,” Mr. O. Pratt. The latter gentleman, who is also an apostle, is a highly though probably a self-educated man, not, as is stated in an English work, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. The Usman of the New Faith, writer, preacher, theologian, missionary, astronomer, philosopher, and mathematician--especially in the higher branches--he has thrust thought into a faith of ceremony which is supposed to dispense with the trouble of thinking, and has intruded human learning into a scheme whose essence is the utter abrogation of the individual will. He is consequently suspected of too much learning; of relying, in fact, rather upon books and mortal paper than that royal road to all knowledge, inspiration from on high, and his tendencies to let loose these pernicious doctrines often bring him into trouble and place him below his position. In his excellent discourse delivered to-day he had declared the poverty of the Mormons, and was speedily put down by Mr. Brigham Young, who boasted the Saints to be the wealthiest (i. e., in good works and post-obit prospects) people in the world. I had tried my best to have the pleasure of half an hour’s conversation with the Gauge, who, however, for reasons unknown to me, declined. At the same meeting Mr. Heber C. Kimball solemnly consigned to a hotter place than the tropics Messrs. Bell and Livingston, the cause being their supposed complicity in bringing in the federal troops. I write it with regret, but both of these gentlemen, when the sad tidings were communicated to them, showed a quasi-Pharaonic hardening of the carnal heart. A measure, however, was on this occasion initiated, which more than compensated for these small ridicules. To the present date missionaries were sent forth, to Canton even, or Kurrachee, like the apostles of Judea, working their passages and supporting themselves by handiwork; being wholly without purse or scrip, baggage or salary, they left their business to languish, and their families to want. When man has no coin of his own, he is naturally disposed to put his hand into his neighbor’s pocket, and the greediness of a few unprincipled propagandists, despite the prohibitions of the Prophet, had caused a scandal by the richness of their “plunder.” A new ordinance was therefore issued to the thirty new nominees.[196] The missionaries were forbidden to take from their converts, and in compensation they would receive regular salaries, for which funds were to be collected in the several wards. On the same evening I was informed a single ward, the 13th, subscribed $3000. That Sunday was an important day to myself also; I posted a “sick certificate,” advising extension of leave for six months, signed by W. F. Anderson, M.D., of the University of Maryland. It was not wholly en règle; it required two signatures and the counter-signature of H. B. M.’s consul to affirm that the signatures were bonâ fide, not “bogus.” But the signer was the only M.D. in the place, H. B. M.’s nearest consul was distant about 600 miles, and to suggest that a gentleman may be quietly forging or falsifying his signature is to incur an unjustifiable personal risk in the Far West.

[196] The following is a copy of the elder’s certificate, officially signed by the president and his two councilors, and supplied to the departing missionary:

“To all Persons to whom this Letter shall come:

“This certifies that the bearer, Elder A. B., is in full faith and fellowship with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and by the general authorities of said Church has been duly appointed a mission to Liverpool to preach the Gospel, and administer in all the ordinances thereof pertaining to his office.

“And we invite all men to give heed to his teachings and counsels as a man of God, sent to open to them the door of life and salvation, and assist him in his travels, in whatsoever things he may need.

“And we pray God, the Eternal Father, to bless Elder A. B., and all who receive him and minister to his comfort, with the blessings of heaven and earth, for time and for all eternity, in the name of Jesus Christ: Amen.

“Signed at Great Salt Lake City, Territory of Utah, ----, 186-, in behalf of said Church.”

Still bent upon collecting the shells of the Basin, I accepted Mr. S----’s offer of being my guide to Ensign Peak, where they are said to be found in the greatest number. Our route lay through the broken wall which once guarded the land against Lemuel, and we passed close by the large barn-like building called the Arsenal, where the military school will also be. Motives of delicacy prevented my asking questions concerning the furniture of the establishment. Anti-Mormons, however, whisper that it contains cannon, mortars, and other large-scaled implements of destruction, prepared, of course, for treasonable purposes. The Arsenal naturally led us into conversation concerning the Nauvoo Legion, the Mormon Battalion, the Danite band, and other things military, of which the reader may not be undesirous of knowing “some.”

[THE NAUVOO LEGION.--GRANTS.]

The Nauvoo Legion was organized in 1840, and was made to include all male Saints between the ages of sixteen and fifty. In 1842 it numbered 2000 men, well officered, uniformed, armed, and drilled. It now may amount throughout the Territory to 6000-8000 men: the Utah militia, however, is officially laid down in the latest returns at 2821. In case of war, it would be assisted by 30,000 or 40,000 Indian warriors. The Legion is commanded by a lieutenant general, at present Mr. Daniel C. Wells, the Martin Hofer of this Western Tyrol; the major general is Mr. C. D. Grant, who, in case of vacancy, takes command. The lieutenant general is elected by a majority of the commissioned officers, and is then commissioned by the governor: he organizes the Legion into divisions, brigades, regiments, battalions, companies, and districts: his staff, besides heads of departments--adjutant, commissary quarter-master, paymaster, and surgeon general--consists of three aids and two topographical engineers with the rank of colonel, a military secretary with the rank of lieutenant colonel, and two chaplains. The present adjutant general is Mr. William Ferguson, one of the few Irish Saints, originally sergeant-major in the Mormon battalion, who, after the fashion of the Western world, combines with the soldier the lawyer and the editor. The minutest directions are issued to the Legion in “An Act to provide for the farther Organization of the Militia of the Territory of Utah” (Territorial Laws, chap. 35), and it is divided into military districts as below.[197] There is, moreover, an independent battalion of Life Guards in Great Salt Lake County not attached to any brigade or division, but subject at all times to the call of the governor and lieutenant general. There are also minute-men, picked fighters, ready to mount, at a few minutes’ notice, upon horses that range near the Jordan, and to take the field in pursuit of Indians or others, under their commandant Colonel Burton. These corps form the nuclei of what will be, after two generations, formidable armies. The increase of Saintly population is rapid, and from their childhood men are trained to arms: each adult has a rifle and a sabre, a revolver and a bowie-knife, and he wants only practice to become a good, efficient, and well-disciplined soldier. Grants amounting to a total of $5000 have at different times been apportioned to military purposes, buildings, mounting ordnance, and schools: Gentiles declare that it was required for education, but I presume that the Mormons, like most people, claim to know their own affairs best. As in the land of Liberty generally, there is a modified conscription; “all free male citizens”--with a few dignified exceptions and exempts--are subject to soldier’s duty within thirty days after their arrival at any military district in the Territory.

[197] There are eleven originally established, viz.:

1st. The Great Salt Lake Military District shall include all the militia within the boundaries of Great Salt Lake City.

2d. The Davis Military District shall include all the militia within the limits of Davis County.

3d. The Weber Military District shall include all the militia within the limits of Weber County.

4th. The Western Jordan Military District shall include all the militia in Great Salt Lake County west of the Jordan River.

5th. The Tooele Military District shall include all the militia within the limits of Tooele County.

6th. The Cotton-wood Military District shall include all the militia in Great Salt Lake County south of the south line of Great Salt Lake City and east of the Jordan River.

7th. The Utah Military District shall include all the militia in Utah County.

8th. The San Pete Military District shall include all the militia within the limits of San Pete County.

9th. The Parovan Military District shall include all the militia within the limits of Millard County.

10th. The Iron Military District shall include all the militia within the limits of Iron County.

11th. The Green River Military District shall include all the militia within the limits of Green River County.

That the Mormon battalion did good service in the Mexican War of 1847 is a matter of history. It was sent at a most critical conjuncture. Application was made to the Saints, when upon the point of commencing their exodus from Egypt, through the deserts of Paran and Sin, where the red Amalekite and the Moabite lay in wait to attack them, and when every male was wanted to defend the old and sick, the women and children, and the valuables of which the Egyptian had not despoiled them. Yet the present Prophet did not hesitate to obey the call: he sent off 500 of his best men, who fought through the war and shared in the triumph. Providence rewarded them. It was a Mormon--James W. Marshall--who, when discharged from service, entered with some comrades the service of a Swiss land-owner, Captain Suter--a remnant of Charles X.’s guard--near Sacramento, on the American River, and who, in January, 1848, when sinking a mill-run or water-run, discovered the shining metal which first made California a household word. On the return of the battalion to Great Salt Lake City, laden with nearly half a million of gold, a mint was established, and a $5 piece was added to the one million dollars which forms the annual circulation of the United States. It bears on the reverse, “Holiness to the Lord,” surmounting a three-cornered cap, placed over a single eye: the former alludes, I was told, mystically to the first Presidency; the obverse having two hands clasped over the date (1849), and the words “Five Dollars, G. S. L. C. P. G.” The $5 appeared somewhat heavier, though smaller than an English sovereign. Anti-Mormons adduce this coinage as an additional proof of saintly presumption; but it was legally done: a Territory may not stamp precious metal with the federal arms, but it has a right to establish its own. They adduce, moreover, a severe charge, namely, that the $5 piece was 15-20 per cent. under weight, and yet was forcibly made current. One remarkable effect the gold certainly had. When the Kirtland Safety Savings Bank, established by Mr. Joseph Smith in February, 1831, broke, he stout-heartedly prophesied that before twenty years should elapse the worthless paper should be again at par. The financial vaticination was true to the letter.[198]

[198] The Mormons quote two other prophecies both equally offensive to the United States, and both equally well known.

On the 26th of April, 1843, Mr. Joseph Smith distinctly declared, in the name of the Lord, that before the arrival of the Son of Man the “question of slavery would cause a rebellion in South Carolina,” and effect a “division of the Southern against the Northern States.” It was a calamity easy to be foreseen, but we look with anxiety to the unfulfilled portion, the “terrible bloodshed” which will result.

In 1846, when, humanly speaking, want and destitution stared the Saints in the face, Mr. Brigham Young predicted that within five years they would be wealthier than before. This was palpably fulfilled in 1849, when the passage of emigrants to California enabled the Saints to exchange their supplies of food for goods and valuables at enormous profits.

I commend these “uninspired prophecies” to the simple-minded translator of “Forewarnings, Prophecies on the Church, Antichrist (who was born, we are told, four years ago), and Revelations in the Last Times.” Messrs. Smith and Young’s vaticinations will be found quite as respectable as the “Visions of an Aged Nun” and the “Predictions of Sister Rosa Columba.” Prophecy, being the highest aim of human induction, is apparently universally and equally diffused.

[THE DANITE BAND.]

The “Danite band,” a name of fear in the Mississippi Valley, is said by anti-Mormons to consist of men between the ages of seventeen and forty-nine. They were originally termed Daughters of Gideon, Destroying Angels--the Gentiles say Devils--and, finally, Sons of Dan, or Danites, from one of whom it was prophesied that he should be a serpent in the path. They were organized about 1837, under D. W. Patten, popularly called Captain Fearnot, for the purpose of dealing as avengers of blood with Gentiles; in fact, they formed a kind of “Death Society,” Desperadoes, Thugs, Hashshashiyun--in plain English, assassins in the name of the Lord. The Mormons declare categorically the whole and every particular to be the calumnious invention of the impostor and arch apostate Mr. John C. Bennett, whilom mayor of Nauvoo; that the mystery and horror of the idea made it equally grateful to the knave and fool who persecuted them, and that not a trader could be scalped, nor a horse-stealer shot, nor a notorious villain of a Gentile knived without the deed of blood being attributed to Danite hands directed by prophetic heads. It was supposed that the Danites assume savage disguises: “he has met the Indians” was a proverbial phrase, meaning that a Gentile has fallen into the power of the destroying angels. I but express the opinion of sensible and moderate neutrals in disbelieving the existence of an organized band of “Fidawi;” where every man is ready to be a Danite, Danites are not wanting. Certainly, in the terrible times of Missouri and Illinois, destroying angels were required to smite secretly, mysteriously, and terribly the first-born of Egypt; now the necessity has vanished. This, however, the Mormons deny, declaring the existence of the Danites, like that of spiritual wives, to be, and ever to have been, literally and in substance totally and entirely untrue.

[THE JEBEL NUR.]

Meanwhile we had nearly ascended the Jebel Nur of this new Meccah, the big toe of the Wasach Mountains, and exchanged the sunny temperature below for a cold westerly wind, that made us feel snow: the air improved in purity, as we could judge by the effects of carcasses lying at different heights. The bench up which we trod was gashed by broad ravines, and bore upon its red soil a growth of thin sage and sunflower. A single fossil and two varieties of shells were found: iron and quartz were scattered over the surface, and there is a legend of gold having been discovered here. Presently, standing upon the topmost bluff, we sat down to enjoy a view which I have attempted to reproduce in a sketch. Below the bench lay the dot-like houses of Zion. We could see with bird’s-eye glance the city laid out like a chess-board, and all the length and breadth of its bee-line streets and crow-flight avenues, which, bordered by distance-dwarfed trees, narrowed to threads as they drew toward a vanishing point. Beyond the suburbs stretched the valley plain, sprinkled with little plantations clustering round the smaller settlements, and streaked by the rivulets which, arising from the frowning pine-clad heights on the left, flowed toward the little Jordan of this young Judea on the right. The extreme south was bounded by the denticulated bench which divided like a mole the valleys of the Great Salt and Utah Lakes. Already autumn had begun: the purpling plain and golden slopes shed a dying glory over the departing year, while the mellowing light of evening, and aerial blue from above, toned down to absolute beauty each harsher feature of the scene.

After lingering for a while over the fair coup d’œil, we descended, holding firm the sage-bushes, the abrupt western slope, and we passed by the warm Harrowgate spring, with its sulphury blue waters, white lime-like bed, and rushy margins in dark earth, snow-capped with salt efflorescence. As we entered the city we met a noted Gentile innocently driving out a fair Saint: both averted their faces as they passed us, but my companion’s color darkened. All races have their pet prohibitions and aversions, their likes and dislikes in matters of sin. Among the Mormons, a suspicion of immorality is more hateful than the reputation of bloodshed. So horse-thieving in the Western States is a higher crime than any other--in fact, the sin which is never forgiven. An editor thus unconcernedly sums up the history of one lately shot when plundering stock: “He was buried by those who meted out to him summary justice, not exactly attending to law, but upon a more speedy, economical, and salutary principle, and a stake was placed at the head of his grave, on which was inscribed ‘A. B. B----, shot for horse-stealing, July 1, 1860.’”

Entering the city by the northwest, we passed the Academy of the 7th Ward. Standing in a 10-acre block, it is a large adobe building with six windows, built for a hotel, and bought for educational purposes by the Prophet. Forms and tables, scattered with the usual school-books, were the sole furniture, and the doors were left open as if they had nothing to defend. My companion had a truly brotherly way of treating his co-religionists; he never met one, however surly-looking, without a salute, and when a door was opened he usually walked in. Thus we visited successively a water-power-mill, a tannery, and an English coachmaker, painter, and varnisher. Some of the houses which we passed were neat and cleanly curtained, especially that belonging to an Englishwoman whose husband, Captain R----, had lately left her in widowhood. We finished with the garden of Apostle Woodruff, who introduced us to his wife, and showed us work of which he had reason to be proud. Despite the hard, ungrateful soil which had required irrigation for the last ten years, there were apricots from Malta, the Hooker strawberries, here worth $5 the plant, plum-trees from Kew Gardens, French and Californian grapes, wild plum and buffalo berry, black currants, peaches, and apples--with which last we were hospitably loaded--in numbers. The kitchen garden contained rhubarb, peas, potatoes, Irish and sweet, asparagus, white and yellow carrots, cabbages, and huge beets: the sugar-cane had been tried there, but it was not, like the sweet holcus, a success.

[CEMETERY.]

The last time I walked out of Great Salt Lake City was to see the cemetery, which lies on the bench to the northeast of the settlement. There is but one cemetery for saint and sinner, and it has been prudently removed about three miles from the abodes of the living. The tombs, like the funeral ceremonies, are simple, lacking the “monumental mockery” which renders the country church-yard in England a fitter study for farce than for elegy. On occasions of death, prayers are offered in the house, and the corpse is carried at once to its last home. The grave-yard is walled round, and contains a number of occupants, the tombs being denoted by a stone or board, with name and date, and sometimes a religious sentence, at the head and foot.

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