X. Farther Observations at Great Salt Lake City
[THE COURT-HOUSE.--P. K. DOTSON.]
One of my last visits was to the court-house on an interesting occasion. The Palais de Justice is near where the old fort once was, in the western part of the settlement. It is an unfinished building of adobe, based on red sandstone, with a flag-staff and a tinned roof, which gives it a somewhat Muscovite appearance, and it cost $20,000. The courts and Legislature sit in a neat room, with curtains and chandeliers, and polished pine-wood furniture, all as yet unfaded. The occasion which had gathered together the notabilities of the place was this: Mr. Peter Dotson, the United States Marshal of the Territory, living at Camp Floyd, and being on the opposition side, had made himself--the Mormons say--an unscrupulous partisan. In July, 1859, he came from the cantonment armed with a writ issued by Mr. Delana R. Eckels, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and accompanied by two officers of the United States Army, to the Holy City for the purpose of arresting a Mr. Mackenzie--now in the Penitentiary for counterfeiting “quarter-masters’ drafts”--an engraver by profession, and then working in the Deserét store of Mr. Brigham Young. Forgery and false coining are associated in the Gentile mind with Mormonism, and inveterately so; whether truly or not, I can not say: it is highly probable that Mr. Bogus’s[215] habitat is not limited by latitude, altitude, or longitude; at the same time, the Saints are too much en évidence to entertain him publicly. The marshal, probably not aware that the Territory had passed no law enabling the myrmidons of justice to seize suspicious implements and apparatus made main forte, levied, despite due notice, upon what he found appertaining to Mr. Mackenzie, a Bible, a Book of Mormon, and--here was the rub--the copper plates of the Deserét Currency Association. This plunder was deposited for the night with the governor, and was carried in a sack on the next day to Camp Floyd. Then the anti-Mormons sang Io pæans; they had--to use a Western phrase--“got the dead wood on Brigham;” letters traced back to officials appeared in the Eastern and other papers, announcing to the public that the Prophet was a detected forger. Presently, the true character of the copper plates appearing, they were generously offered back; but, as trespass had been committed, to say nothing of libel, and as all concerned in the affair were obnoxious men, it was resolved to try law. A civil suit was instituted, and a sum of $1600 was claimed for damage done to the plates by scratching, and for loss of service, which hindered business in the city. The unfortunate marshal, who was probably a “cat’s-paw,” had “caught a Tartar;” he possessed a house and furniture, a carriage and horses, all of which were attached, and the case of “Brigham Young, sen., vs. P. K. Dotson,” ended in a verdict for the plaintiff, viz., value of plates destroyed, $1668; damages, $648 66. The anti-Mormons declared him a martyr; the Mormons, a vicious fool; and sensible Gentiles asserted that he was rightly served for showing evil animus. The case might have ended badly but for the prudence of the governor. Had a descent been made for the purpose of arrest upon the Prophet’s house, the consequences would certainly have been serious to the last degree.
[215] Bogus, according to Mr. Bartlett, who quotes the “Boston Courier” of June 12, 1857, is a Western corruption of Borghese, “a very corrupt individual, who, twenty years ago or more, did a tremendous business in the way of supplying the great West and portions of the Southwest with counterfeit bills and drafts on fictitious banks.” The word is now applied in the sense of sham, forged, counterfeit, and so on; there are bogus laws and bogus members; in fact, bogus enters every where.
The cause was tried in the Probate Court, which I have explained to be a Territorial, not a federal court. The Honorable Elias Smith presided, and the arguments for the prosecution and the defense were conducted by the ablest Mormon and anti-Mormon lawyers. I attended the house, and carefully watched the proceedings, to detect, if possible, intimidation or misdirection; every thing was done with even-handed justice. The physical aspect of the court was that which foreign travelers in the Far West delight to describe and ridicule, wholly forgetting that they have seen the same scene much nearer home. His honor sat with his chair tilted back and his boots on the table, exactly as if he had been an Anglo-Indian collector and magistrate, while by a certain contraction and expansion of the dexter corner of his well-closed mouth I suspected the existence of the quid. The position is queer, but not more so than that of a judge at Westminster sleeping soundly, in the attitude of Pisa’s leaning monster, upon the bench. By the justice’s side sat the portly figure of Dr. Kay, opposite him the reporters, at other tables the attorneys; the witnesses stood up between the tables, the jury were on the left, and the public, including the governor, was distributed like wall-flowers on benches around the room.
There is a certain monotony of life in Great Salt Lake City which does not render the subject favorable for description. Moreover, a Moslem gloom, the result of austere morals and manners, of the semi-seclusion of the sex, and, in my case, of a reserve arising toward a stranger who appeared in the train of federal officials, hangs over society. There is none of that class which, according to the French author, repose des femmes du monde. We rose early--in America the climate seems to militate against slugabedism--and breakfasted at any hour between 6 and 9 A.M. Ensued “business,” which seemed to consist principally of correcting one’s teeth, and walking about the town, with occasional “liquoring up.” Dinner was at 1 P.M., announced, not by the normal gong of the Eastern States, which lately so direfully offended a pair of Anglo-Hibernian ears, but by a hand-bell which sounded the pas de charge. Jostling into the long room of the ordinary, we took our seats, and, seizing our forks, proceeded at once to action, after the fashion of Puddingburn House, where
“They who came not the first call, Got no meat till the next meal.”
Nothing but water was drunk at dinner, except when a gentleman preferred to wash down roast pork with a tumbler of milk; wine in this part of the world is of course dear and bad, and even should the Saints make their own, it can scarcely be cheap on account of the price of labor. Feeding ended with a glass of liquor, not at the bar, because there was none, but in the privacy of one’s chamber, which takes from drinking half its charm. Most well-to-do men found time for a siesta in the early afternoon. There was supper, which in modern English parlance would be called dinner, at 6 P.M., and the evening was easily spent with a friend.
[HISTORIAN AND RECORDER’S OFFICE.]
One of my favorite places of visiting was the Historian and Recorder’s Office, opposite Mr. Brigham Young’s block. It contained a small collection of volumes, together with papers, official and private, plans, designs, and other requisites, many of them written in the Deserét alphabet, of which I subjoin a copy.[216] It is, as will readily be seen, a stereographic modification of Pitman’s and other systems. Types have been cast for it, and articles are printed in the newspapers at times; as man, however, prefers two alphabets to one, it will probably share the fate of the “Fonetik Nuz.” Sir A. Alison somewhere delivers it as his opinion that the future historian of America will be forced to Europe, where alone his material can be found; so far from this being the case, the reverse is emphatically true: every where in the States, even in the newest, the Historical Society is an institution, and men pride themselves upon laboring for it. At the office I used to meet Mr. George A. Smith, the armor-bearer to the Prophet in the camp of Zion, who boasts of having sown the first seed, built the first saw-mill, and ground the first flour in Southern Utah, whence the nearest settlements, separated by terrible deserts, were distant 200 miles. His companions were Messrs. W. Woodruff, Bishop Bentley, who was preparing for a missionary visit to England, and Wm. Thomas Bullock, an intelligent Mormon, who has had the honor to be soundly abused in Mrs. Ferris’s 11th letter. The lady’s “wicked Welshman”--I suppose she remembered the well-known line anent the sons of the Cymri--
“Taffy is a Welshman, Taffy is a thief”--
is no Cambrian, but an aborigine of Leek, Staffordshire, England, and was from 1838 to 1843 an excise officer in her majesty’s Inland Revenue; he kindly supplied me with a plan of the city, and other information, for which he has my grateful thanks.
[216] See next page.
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | THE DESERÉT ALPHABET. | +---------------------+-------++------------------------------------+ | =VOCAL SOUNDS.= | 𐐘 Ga ||The sounds of the letters 𐐆, 𐐇, 𐐈, | +---------+-----------+ ||𐐉, 𐐊, 𐐋 are heard in the words fit, | |=Long.= | =Double.= | 𐐙 F ||net, fat, cot, nut, foot. | | | | || | | 𐐀 E | 𐐌 I | 𐐚 V ||𐐕, 𐐘, 𐐛, 𐐜, 𐐟 are heard in the words| | | | ||chee-se, ga-te, s-eth, the, | | 𐐁 A | 𐐍 Ow | 𐐛 Eth ||fl-esh. | | | | || | | 𐐂 Ah | 𐐎 Woo | 𐐜 The ||𐐡 is like ir in st-ir; are is | | | | ||made by the combination of 𐐈 𐐡; 𐐥 is| | 𐐃 Aw | 𐐏 Ye | 𐐝 S ||heard in l-eng-th. | | | | || | | 𐐄 O |=Aspirate.=| 𐐞 Z ||=Learn this Alphabet and appreciate | | | 𐐐 H | || its advantages.= | | 𐐅 Oo +===========+ 𐐟 Esh || | | |=Articulate| || | | | Sounds.= | 𐐠 Zhe || | |=Short.= | 𐐑 P | || | |𐐆} | | 𐐡 Ur || | | }(This | 𐐒 B | || | |𐐇}column | | 𐐢 L || | | } of | 𐐓 T | || | |𐐈}letters| | 𐐣 M || | | }are the| 𐐔 D | || | |𐐉} short | | 𐐤 N || | | }sounds | 𐐕 Che | || | |𐐊}of the | | 𐐥 Eng || | | }above).| 𐐖 G | || | |𐐋} | | || | | | 𐐗 K | || | +---------+-----------+-------++------------------------------------+
[FEDERAL OFFICIALS.]
At the office, the undying hatred of all things Gentile-federal had reached its climax; every slight offered to the faith by anti-Mormons is there laid up in lavender, every grievance is carefully recorded. There I heard how, at a general conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, in September, 1851, Perry E. Brocchus, a judge of the Supreme Court, having the design of becoming Territorial delegate to Congress, ascended the rostrum and foully abused their most cherished institution, polygamy.[217] He was answered with sternness by Mr. Brigham Young, and really, under the circumstances, the Saints behaved very well in not proceeding to voies de faits. Mr. Brocchus, seeing personal danger, left the city in company with Chief Justice L. C. Brandenburg and Mr. Secretary Harris, whom the Mormons very naturally accused of carrying away $24,000, the sum appropriated by Congress for the salary and the mileage of the local Legislature, thus putting a clog upon the wheels of government. I also heard how Judge Drummond, in 1856, began the troubles by falsely reporting to the federal authority that the Mormons were in a state of revolt; that they had burned the public library, and were, in fact, defying the Union--how, bigotry doing its work, the officials at Washington believed the tale without investigation, and sent an army which was ready to renew the scenes of St. Bartholomew and Nauvoo. The federal troops were rather pitied than hated; had they been militia they would have been wiped out; but “wretched Dutchmen, and poor devils of Irishmen,” acting under orders, were simply despised. Their fainéantise was contrasted most unfavorably with the fiery Mormon youth that was spoiling for a fight; that could ride, like part of the horse, down places where no trooper dared venture; that picked up a dollar at full gallop, drove off the invaders’ cattle, burned wagons, grass, and provisions, offered to lasso the guns, and, when they had taken a prisoner, drank with him and let him go--how Governor Cumming, after his entry, at once certified the untruthfulness of the scandal spread by Judge Drummond, especially that touching the library and archives, and reported that no federal officer had ever been killed or even assaulted by the Saints--how the effects of these misrepresentations have been and still are serious. In 1857, for instance, the mail was cut off, and a large commercial community was left without postal communication for a whole year: the ostensible reason was the troubled state of the Territory; the real cause was the desire of the Post-office Department to keep the advance of the troops dark. The Mormons complain that they have ever been made a subject of political capital. President Van Buren openly confessed to them, “Gentlemen, your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you; if I took your part I should lose the vote of Missouri.” Every grievance against them, they say, is listened to and readily believed: as an example, a Mr. John Robinson, of Liverpool, had lately represented to her Britannic majesty’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs that his mother and sister were detained in Utah Territory against their will; the usual steps were taken; the British minister applied to the United States Secretary of State, who referred the affair to the governor of the Territory; after which process the tale turned out a mere canard. This sister had been married to Mr. Ferguson, adjutant general of the Nauvoo Legion; the mother had left the City of the Saints for Illinois, and had just written to her son-in-law for means by which she could return to a place whence she was to be rescued by British interference. To a false prejudice against themselves the Mormons attribute the neglect with which their project of colonizing Vancouver’s Island was treated by the British government, and the active opposition to be expected should they ever attempt to settle in the Valley of the Saskatchewan. And they think it poor policy on the part of England to “bluff off” 100,000 moral, industrious, and obedient subjects, who would be a bulwark against aggression on the part of the States, and tend materially to prepare the thousand miles of valley between the Mississippi and the Pacific for the coming railway.
[217] On the 5th of April, 1860, the Chamber of Representatives at Washington passed a projected law to repress polygamy by a majority of 149 to 60. Fortunately, the Committee of the Senate had no time to report upon it, and the slave discussion assumed dimensions which buried Mormonism in complete oblivion.
[CHILDREN OF THE SAINTS.]
At the office I also obtained details concerning education in Great Salt Lake City. Before commencing the subject it will be necessary to notice certain statements relating to the ingenuous youth of Utah Territory. It is generally asserted that juvenile mortality here ranks second only to Louisiana, and the fault is, of course, charged upon polygamy. A French author talks of the mortalité effrayante among the newly-born, while owning, anomalously, that the survivors sont braves et robustes. I “doubt the fact.” Mr. Ferris, moreover, declares that there is “nowhere out of the Five Points of New York City a more filthy, miserable, and disorderly rabble of children than can be found in the streets of Great Salt Lake City.” As far as my experience goes, it is the reverse. I was surprised by their numbers, cleanliness, and health, their hardihood and general good looks. They are bold and spirited. The Mormon father, like the Indian brave, will not allow the barbarous use of the stick; but this is perhaps a general feeling throughout the States, where the English traveler first observes the docility of the horses and the indocility of the children. But, as regards rudeness, let a man “with whiskers under his snout,” i. e., mustaches, ride through a village in Essex or Warwickshire, and he will suffer more contumely at the hands of the infant population in half an hour than in half a year in the United States or in Utah. M. Remy, despite a “vif désir” to judge favorably of the Saints, could not help owning that the children are mostly grossiers, menteurs, libertins avant l’âge; that they use un langage honteux, comme si les mystères de la polygamie leur avaient été révélés dès l’âge de raison. Apparently since 1855 cette corruption précoce has disappeared. I found less premature depravity than in the children of European cities generally. Mr. J. Hyde also brings against the juvenile Saints severe charges, too general, however, not to be applicable to other lands. “Cheating the confiding is called smart trading;” the same has been said of New England. “Mischievous cruelty, evidences of spirit;” the attribute of Plato’s boys and of the Western frontiers generally. “Pompous bravado, manly talk;” not unusual in New York, London, and Paris. “Reckless riding, fearless courage;” so apparently thinks the author of “Guy Livingstone.” “And if they outtalk their fathers, outwit their companions, whip their schoolteacher, outcurse a Gentile, they are thought to be promising greatness, and are praised accordingly. Every visitor to Salt Lake will recognize the portrait, for every visitor proclaims them to be the most whisky-loving, tobacco-chewing, saucy, and precocious children he ever saw.” This is the glance of the anti-Mormon eye pure and simple. Tobacco and whisky are too dear for childhood at the City of the Saints; moreover, twenty years ago, before Tom Brown taught boys not to be ashamed of being called good, a youth at many an English public school would have been “cock of the walk” if gifted with the rare merits described above. I remarked that the juveniles had all the promptness of reply and the peremptoriness of information which characterizes the Scotch and the people of the Eastern States. A half-educated man can not afford to own ignorance. He must answer categorically every question, however beyond his reach; and the result is fatal to the diaries of those travelers who can not diagnostize the disease.
[MORMON EDUCATION.]
Mormon education is of course peculiar. The climate predisposes to indolence. While the emigrants from the Old Country are the most energetic and hard-working of men, their children, like the race of backwoodsmen in mass, are averse to any but pleasurable physical exertion. The object of the young colony is to rear a swarm of healthy working bees. The social hive has as yet no room for drones, book-worms, and gentlemen. The work is proportioned to their powers and inclinations. At fifteen a boy can use a whip, an axe, or a hoe--he does not like the plow--to perfection. He sits a bare-backed horse like a Centaur, handles his bowie-knife skillfully, never misses a mark with his revolver, and can probably dispose of half a bottle of whisky. It is not an education which I would commend to the generous youth of Paris and London, but it is admirably fitted to the exigencies of the situation. With regard to book-work, there is no difficulty to obtain in Great Salt Lake City that “mediocrity of knowledge between learning and ignorance” which distinguished the grammar-schools of the Western Islands in the days of Samuel Johnson. Amid such a concourse of European converts, any language, from Hebrew to Portuguese, can be learned. Mathematics and the exact sciences have their votaries. There are graduates of Harvard, Dartmouth, and other colleges. I saw one gentleman who had kept a school in Portsmouth, and another, who had had a large academy in Shropshire, taught in the school of the 14th ward. Music, dancing, drawing, and other artlets, which go by the name of accomplishments, have many votaries. Indefatigable travelers there are in abundance. Almost every Mormon is a missionary, and every missionary is a voyager. Captain Gibson, a well-known name for “personal initiative” in the Eastern Main, where he was seized by the Dutch of Java, lately became a convert to Mormonism, married his daughter to Mr. Brigham Young, and in sundry lectures delivered in the Tabernacle, advised the establishment of a stake of Zion in the “Islands of the Seas,” which signified, I suppose, his intention that the Netherlands should “smell H--ll.” Law is commonly studied, and the practice, as I have shown, is much simplified by the absence of justice. A solicitor from London is also established here. Theology is the growth of the soil. Medicine is represented by two graduates--one of Maryland; the other, who prefers politics to practice, of New York. I am at pains to discover what gave rise to the Gentile reports that the Mormons, having a veritable horror of medicine, leave curing to the priests, and dare not arrogate the art of healing. Masterships and apprenticeships are carefully regulated by Territorial law. Every one learns to read and write; probably the only destitutes are the old European pariahs, and the gleanings from the five or six millions of English illiterati. The Mormons have discovered, or, rather, have been taught, by their necessities as a working population in a state barely twelve years old, that the time of school drudgery may profitably be abridged. A boy, they say, will learn all that his memory can carry during three hours of book-work, and the rest had far better be spent in air, exercise, and handicraft. To their eminently practical views I would offer one suggestion, the advisability of making military drill and extension movements, with and without weapons, a part of scholarhood. For “setting up” the figure, forming the gait, and exercising the muscles, it is the best of gymnastic systems, and the early habit of acting in concert with others is a long stride in the path of soldiership.
While it is the fashion with some to deride the attempts of this painstaking and industrious community of hard-handed men to improve their minds, other anti-Mormons have taken the popular ground of representing the Saints as averse to intellectual activity, despisers of science, respecters only of manual labor, and “singulièrement épris de la force brutale.” It is as ungenerous as to ridicule the proceedings of an English Mechanics’ Institute, or the compositions of an “Ed. Mechanics’ Magazine.” The names of their literary institutions are, it is true, somewhat pretentious and grandiloquent; but in these lands there is every where a leaning toward the grandiose. Humility does not pay. Modesty laudatur et alget.
As early as December, 1854, an act was approved enabling the Chancellor and Board of Regents of the University of the State of Deserét to appoint a superintendent of common schools for the Territory of Utah, and duly qualified trustees were elected to assess and collect for educational purposes a tax upon all taxable property. In the same year a pathetic memorial was dispatched to Congress, requesting that honorable body to appropriate the sum of $5000 to advance the interests of the University established by law in the City of Great Salt Lake. I know not whether it was granted. As yet there is no educational tax leviable throughout the Territory. Each district makes its own regulations. A city rate supports a school in each ward. The buildings are of plain adobe, thirty feet by twenty. They also serve as meeting-places on Sabbath evenings. There are tutoresses in three or four of the school-houses, who teach all the year round, whereas male education is usually limited by necessity to the three winter months. A certain difficulty exists in finding instructors. As in Australia, the pedagogue is cheaper than a porter, and “turning schoolmaster” is a proverbial phrase about equivalent to coming upon the parish.
The principal educational institutions in Great Salt Lake City have been the following:
1. The Deserét Universal Scientific.
2. The “Polysophical Society,” a name given by Judge Phelps.
3. The Seventies’ Variety Club.
4. The Council of Health, a medico-physiologio-clinical and matronly establishment, like the Dorcas Societies of the Eastern States.
5. The Deserét Theological Institution, whose President was Mr. Brigham Young.
6. The Deserét Library and Musical Society.
7. The Phrenological and Horticultural Society.
8. The Deserét Agricultural and Manufacturing Society, which has already been alluded to. It has many branch societies, whose members pay an annual subscription of $1.
9. The Academy founded in April, 1860, with an appropriation by the local Legislature of Church money to the extent of $2500. Science and art are to be taught gratis to all who will pledge themselves to learn thoroughly and to benefit the Territory by their exertions. The superintendent is Mr. Orson Pratt; and his son, Mr. O. Pratt, junior, together with Mr. Cobb, a Gentile, acts as teacher. At present those educated are males; in course of time a girl class will be established for accomplishments and practical education.
The Historian’s Office was ever to me a place of pleasant resort; I take my leave of it with many expressions of gratitude for the instructive hours passed there.
It will, I suppose, be necessary to supply a popular view of the “peculiar institution,” at once the bane and blessing of Mormonism--plurality. I approach the subject with a feeling of despair, so conflicting are opinions concerning it, and so difficult is it to naturalize in Europe the customs of Asia, Africa, and America, or to reconcile the habits of the 19th century A.D. with those of 1900 B.C. A return to the patriarchal ages, we have seen, has its disadvantages.
There is a prevailing idea, especially in England, and even the educated are laboring under it, that the Mormons are Communists or Socialists of Plato’s, Cicero’s, Mr. Owen’s, and M. Cabet’s school; that wives are in public, and that a woman can have as many husbands as the husband can have wives--in fact, to speak colloquially, that they “all pig together.” The contrary is notably the case. The man who, like Messrs. Hamilton and Howard Egan, murders, in cold blood, his wife’s lover, is invariably acquitted, the jury declaring that civil damages mark the rottenness of other governments, and that “the principle, the only one that beats and throbs through the heart of the entire inhabitants (!) of this Territory, is simply this: The man who seduces his neighbor’s wife must die, and her nearest relation must kill him.” Men, like Dr. Vaughan and Mr. Monroe, slain for the mortal sin, perish for their salvation; the Prophet, were they to lay their lives at his feet, would, because unable to hang or behead them, counsel them to seek certain death in a righteous cause as an expiatory sacrifice,[218] which may save their souls alive. Their two mortal sins are: 1. Adultery; 2. Shedding innocent blood.
[218] The form of death has yet to be decided. They call this a scriptural practice, viz., “to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor., v., 5).
This severity of punishing an offense which modern and civilized society looks upon rather in the light of a sin than of a crime, is clearly based upon the Mosaic code. It is also, lex loci, the “common mountain law,” a “religious and social custom,” and a point of personal honor. Another idea underlies it: the Mormons hold, like the Hebrews of old, “children of shame” in extreme dishonor. They quote the command of God, Deuteronomy (xxiii., 2), “a mamzer shall not enter into the Church of the Lord till the tenth generation,” and ask when the order was repealed. They would expel all impurity from the Camp of Zion, and they adopt every method of preventing what they consider a tremendous evil, viz., the violation of God’s temple in their own bodies.
The marriage ceremony is performed in the temple, or, that being impossible, in Mr. Brigham Young’s office, properly speaking by the Prophet, who can, however, depute any follower, as Mr. Heber C. Kimball, a simple apostle, or even an elder, to act for him. When mutual consent is given, the parties are pronounced man and wife in the name of Jesus Christ, prayers follow, and there is a patriarchal feast of joy in the evening.
[THE WIFE.]
The first wife, as among polygamists generally, is the wife, and assumes the husband’s name and title. Her “plurality”-partners are called sisters--such as Sister Anne or Sister Blanche--and are the aunts of her children. The first wife is married for time, the others are sealed for eternity. Hence, according to the Mormons, arose the Gentile calumny concerning spiritual wifedom, which they distinctly deny. Girls rarely remain single past sixteen--in England the average marrying age is thirty--and they would be the pity of the community if they were doomed to a waste of youth so unnatural.
[DIVORCE.]
Divorce is rarely obtained by the man who is ashamed to own that he can not keep his house in order; some, such as the President, would grant it only in case of adultery: wives, however, are allowed to claim it for cruelty, desertion, or neglect. Of late years, Mormon women married to Gentiles are cut off from the society of the Saints, and, without uncharitableness, men suspect a sound previous reason. The widows of the Prophet are married to his successor, as David took unto himself the wives of Saul; being generally aged, they occupy the position of matron rather than wife, and the same is the case when a man espouses a mother and her daughter.
[THE VIRGIN’S END.]
It is needless to remark how important a part matrimony plays in the history of an individual, and of that aggregate of individuals, a people; or how various and conflicting has been Christian practice concerning it, from the double marriage, civil and religious, the former temporary, the latter permanent, of the Coptic or Abyssinian Church, to the exaggerated purity of Mistress Anna Lee, the mother of the Shakers, who exacted complete continence in a state established according to the first commandment, crescite et multiplicamini. The literalism with which the Mormons have interpreted Scripture has led them directly to polygamy. The texts promising to Abraham a progeny numerous as the stars above or the sands below, and that “in his seed (a polygamist) all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” induce them, his descendants, to seek a similar blessing. The theory announcing that “the man is not without the woman, nor the woman without the man,” is by them interpreted into an absolute command that both sexes should marry, and that a woman can not enter the heavenly kingdom without a husband to introduce her. A virgin’s end is annihilation or absorption, nox est perpetua una dormienda; and as baptism for the dead--an old rite, revived and founded upon the writings of St. Paul quoted in the last chapter--has been made a part of practice, vicarious marriage for the departed also enters into the Mormon scheme. Like certain British Dissenters of the royal burgh of Dundee, who in our day petitioned Parliament for permission to bigamize, the Mormons, with Bossuet and others, see in the New Testament no order against plurality,[219] and in the Old dispensation they find the practice sanctioned in a family, ever the friends of God, and out of which the Redeemer sprang. Finally, they find throughout the nations of the earth three polygamists in theory to one monogame.
[219] Histoire des Variations, liv. iv. “L’Evangile n’a ni révoqué ni défendu ce qui avait été permis dans la loi de Moïse à l’égard du mariage: Jesus Christ n’a pas changé la police extérieure, mais il a ajouté seulement la justice et la vie éternelle pour récompense.” So, in 1539, the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, wishing to marry a second wife while the first was alive, was permitted to “commit bigamy” by the eminent reformers, M. Luther, Kuhorn (M. Bucer), Melancthon, and others, with the sole condition of secrecy. In the present age, the Right Rev. J. W. Colenso, D.D. and Bishop of Natal, “not only tolerates polygamy in converts, but defends it on the ground of religion and humanity.”
[POLYGAMY.]
The “chaste and plural marriage,” being once legalized, finds a multitude of supporters. The anti-Mormons declare that it is at once fornication and adultery--a sin which absorbs all others. The Mormons point triumphantly to the austere morals of their community, their superior freedom from maladive influences, and the absence of that uncleanness and licentiousness which distinguish the cities of the civilized world. They boast that, if it be an evil, they have at least chosen the lesser evil; that they practice openly as a virtue what others do secretly as a sin--how full is society of these latent Mormons!--that their plurality has abolished the necessity of concubinage, cryptogamy, contubernium, celibacy, mariages du treizième arrondissement, with their terrible consequences, infanticide, and so forth; that they have removed their ways from those “whose end is bitter as wormwood, and sharp as a two-edged sword.” Like its sister institution Slavery, the birth and growth of a similar age, Polygamy acquires vim by abuse and detraction: the more turpitude is heaped upon it, the brighter and more glorious it appears to its votaries.
There are rules and regulations of Mormonism--I can not say whether they date before or after the heavenly command to pluralize--which disprove the popular statement that such marriages are made to gratify licentiousness, and which render polygamy a positive necessity. All sensuality in the married state is strictly forbidden beyond the requisite for insuring progeny--the practice, in fact, of Adam and Abraham. During the gestation and nursing of children, the strictest continence on the part of the mother is required--rather for a hygienic than for a religious reason. The same custom is practiced in part by the Jews, and in whole by some of the noblest tribes of savages; the splendid physical development of the Kaffir race in South Africa is attributed by some authors to a rule of continence like that of the Mormons, and to a lactation prolonged for two years. The anomaly of such a practice in the midst of civilization is worthy of a place in De Balzac’s great repertory of morbid anatomy: it is only to be equaled by the exceptional nature of the Mormon’s position, his past fate and his future prospects. Spartan-like, the Faith wants a race of warriors, and it adopts the best means to obtain them.
Besides religious and physiological, there are social motives for the plurality. As in the days of Abraham, the lands about New Jordan are broad and the people few. Of the three forms that unite the sexes, polygamy increases, while monogamy balances, and polyandry diminishes progeny. The former, as Montesquieu acutely suggested, acts inversely to the latter by causing a preponderance of female over male births: “Un fait important à noter,” says M. Remy, “c’est qu’il y a en Utah beaucoup plus de naissances de filles que de garçons, resultat opposé à ce qu’on observe dans tous les pays où la monogamie est pratiquée, et parfaitement conforme à ce qu’on a remarqué chez les polygames Mussulmans.” M. Remy’s statement is as distinctly affirmed by Mr. Hyde, the Mormon apostate. In the East, where the census is unknown, we can judge of the relative proportions of the sexes only by the families of the great and wealthy, who invariably practice polygamy, and we find the number of daughters mostly superior to that of sons, except where female infanticide deludes the public into judging otherwise. In lands where polyandry is the rule, for instance, in the Junsar and Bawur pergunnahs of the Dhun, there is a striking discrepancy in the proportions of the sexes among young children as well as adults: thus, in a village where 400 boys are found, there will be 120 girls; and, on the other hand, in the Gurhwal Hills, where polygamy is prevalent, there is a surplus of female children. The experienced East Indian official who has published this statement[220] is “inclined to give more weight to nature’s adaptability to national habit than to the possibility of infanticide,” for which there are no reasons. If these be facts, Nature then has made provision for polygamy and polyandry: our plastic mother has prepared her children to practice them all. Even in Scotland modern statists have observed that the proportion of boys born to girls is greater in the rural districts; and, attributing the phenomenon to the physical weakening of the parents, have considered it a rule so established as to “afford a valuable hint to those who desire male progeny.” The anti-Mormons are fond of quoting Paley: “It is not the question whether one man will have more children by five wives, but whether these five women would not have had more children if they had each a husband.” The Mormons reply that--setting aside the altered rule of production--their colony, unlike all others, numbers more female than male immigrants; consequently that, without polygamy, part of the social field would remain untilled.[221]
[220] Hunting in the Himalaya, by R. H. W. Dunlop, C.B., B.C.S., F.R.G.S., London, Richard Bentley, 1860.
[221] I am sure of the correctness of this assertion, which is thus denied in general terms by M. Reclus, of the Revue des Deux-Mondes. “A la fin de 1858, on comptaît sur le Territoire 3617 maris polygames, dont 1117 ayant cinque femmes ou d’avantage: mais un grand nombre de Mormons n’avaient encore pu trouver d’épouses; il est probable même que le chiffre des hommes depasse celui des femmes, comme dans tous les pays peuplés d’emigrans. L’équilibre entre les sexes n’est pas encore établi.”
To the unprejudiced traveler it appears that polygamy is the rule where population is required, and where the great social evil has not had time to develop itself. In Paris or London the institution would, like slavery, die a natural death; in Arabia and in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains it maintains a strong hold upon the affections of mankind. Monogamy is best fitted for the large, wealthy, and flourishing communities in which man is rarely the happier because his quiver is full of children, and where the Hetæra becomes the succedaneum of the “plurality-wife.” Polyandry has been practiced principally by priestly and barbarous tribes,[222] who fear most for the increase of their numbers, which would end by driving them to honest industry. It reappears in a remarkable manner in the highest state of social civilization, where excessive expenditure is an obstacle to freehold property, and the practice is probably on the increase.
[222] The Mahabharata thus relates the origin of the practice in India. The five princely Pandava brothers, when contending for a prize offered by the King of Drona to the most successful archer, agreed to divide it if any of them should prove the winner. Arjun, the eldest, was declared victor, and received in gift Draupadi, the king’s daughter, who thus became the joint-stock property of the whole fraternity. They lived en famille for some years at the foot of Bairath, the remains of which, or rather a Ghoorka structure on the same site, are still visible on a hill near the N.W. corner of the Dhun. (Hunting in the Himalaya, chap. vii.)
The other motive for polygamy in Utah is economy. Servants are rare and costly; it is cheaper and more comfortable to marry them. Many converts are attracted by the prospect of becoming wives, especially from places where, like Clifton, there are sixty-four females to thirty-six males. The old maid is, as she ought to be, an unknown entity. Life in the wilds of Western America is a course of severe toil: a single woman can not perform the manifold duties of housekeeping, cooking, scrubbing, washing, darning, child-bearing, and nursing a family. A division of labor is necessary, and she finds it by acquiring a sisterhood. Throughout the States, whenever a woman is seen at manual or outdoor work, one is certain that she is Irish, German, or Scandinavian. The delicacy and fragility of the Anglo-American female nature is at once the cause and the effect of this exemption from toil.
[MORMON WOMEN.--POLYGAMY.]
The moral influence diffused over social relations by the presence of polygyny will be intelligible only to those who have studied the workings of the system in lands where seclusion is practiced in its modified form, as among the Syrian Christians. In America society splits into two parts--man and woman--even more readily than in England; each sex is freer and happier in the company of its congeners. At Great Salt Lake City there is a gloom like that which the late Professor H. H. Wilson described as being cast by the invading Moslem over the innocent gayety of the primitive Hindoo. The choice egotism of the heart called Love--that is to say, the propensity elevated by sentiment, and not undirected by reason, subsides into a calm and unimpassioned domestic attachment: romance and reverence are transferred, with the true Mormon concentration, from love and liberty to religion and the Church. The consent of the first wife to a rival is seldom refused, and a ménage à trois, in the Mormon sense of the phrase, is fatal to the development of that tender tie which must be confined to two. In its stead there is household comfort, affection, circumspect friendship, and domestic discipline. Womanhood is not petted and spoiled as in the Eastern States; the inevitable cyclical revolution, indeed, has rather placed her below par, where, however, I believe her to be happier than when set upon an uncomfortable and unnatural eminence.
It will be asked, What view does the softer sex take of polygyny? A few, mostly from the Old Country, lament that Mr. Joseph Smith ever asked of the Creator that question which was answered in the affirmative. A very few, like the Curia Electa, Emma, the first wife of Mr. Joseph Smith--who said of her, by-the-by, that she could not be contented in heaven without rule--apostatize, and become Mrs. Bridemann. The many are, as might be expected of the easily-moulded weaker vessel, which proves its inferior position by the delicate flattery of imitation, more in favor of polygyny than the stronger.
For the attachment of the women of the Saints to the doctrine of plurality there are many reasons. The Mormon prophets have expended all their arts upon this end, well knowing that without the hearty co-operation of mothers and wives, sisters and daughters, no institution can live long. They have bribed them with promises of Paradise--they have subjugated them with threats of annihilation. With them, once a Mormon always a Mormon. I have said that a modified reaction respecting the community of Saints has set in throughout the States; people no longer wonder that their missionaries do not show horns and cloven feet, and the federal officer, the itinerant politician, the platform orator, and the place-seeking demagogue, can no longer make political capital by bullying, oppressing, and abusing them. The tide has turned, and will turn yet more. But the individual still suffers: the apostate Mormon is looked upon by other people as a scamp or a knave, and the woman worse than a prostitute. Again, all the fervor of a new faith burns in their bosoms with a heat which we can little appreciate, and the revelation of Mr. Joseph Smith is considered on this point as superior to the Christian as the latter is in others to the Mosaic Dispensation. Polygamy is a positive command from heaven: if the flesh is mortified by it, tant mieux--“no cross, no crown;” “blessed are they that mourn.” I have heard these words from the lips of a well-educated Mormon woman, who, in the presence of a Gentile sister, urged her husband to take unto himself a second wife. The Mormon household has been described by its enemies as a hell of envy, hatred, and malice--a den of murder and suicide. The same has been said of the Moslem harem. Both, I believe, suffer from the assertions of prejudice or ignorance. The temper of the New is so far superior to that of the Old Country, that, incredible as the statement may appear, rival wives do dwell together in amity, and do quote the proverb “the more the merrier.” Moreover, they look with horror at the position of the “slavey” of a pauper mechanic at being required to “nigger it” upon love and starvation, and at the necessity of a numerous family. They know that nine tenths of the miseries of the poor in large cities arise from early and imprudent marriages, and they would rather be the fiftieth “sealing” of Dives than the toilsome single wife of Lazarus. The French saying concerning motherhood--“le premier embellit, le second détruit, le troisième gâte tout,” is true in the Western world. The first child is welcomed, the second is tolerated, the third is the cause of tears and reproaches, and the fourth, if not prevented by gold pills or some similar monstrosity, causes temper, spleen, and melancholy, with disgust and hatred of the cause. What the Napoleonic abolition of the law of primogeniture, combined with centralization of the peasant class in towns and cities, has effected on this side of the Channel, the terrors of maternity, aggravated by a highly nervous temperament, small cerebellum, constitutional frigidity, and extreme delicacy of fibre, have brought to pass in the older parts of the Union.
Another curious effect of fervent belief may be noticed in the married state. When a man has four or five wives, with reasonable families by each, he is fixed for life: his interests, if not his affections, bind him irrevocably to his new faith. But the bachelor, as well as the monogamic youth, is prone to backsliding. Apostasy is apparently so common that many of the new Saints form a mere floating population. He is proved by a mission before being permitted to marry, and even then women, dreading a possible renegade, with the terrible consequences of a heavenless future to themselves, are shy of saying yes. Thus it happens that male celibacy is mixed up in a curious way with polygamy, and that also in a faith whose interpreter advises youth not to remain single after sixteen, nor girls after fourteen. The celibacy also is absolute; any infraction of it would be dangerous to life. Either, then, the first propensity of the phrenologist is poorly developed in these lands--this has been positively stated of the ruder sex in California--or its action is to be regulated by habit to a greater degree than is usually believed.
[MRS. PRATT’S OPINION.]
I am conscious that my narrative savors of incredibility; the fault is in the subject, not in the narrator. Exoneravi animan meam. The best proof that my opinions are correct will be the following quotation. It is a letter addressed to a sister in New Hampshire by a Mrs. Belinda M. Pratt, the wife of the celebrated apostle. M. Remy has apparently dramatized it (vol. ii., chap. ii.) by casting it into dialogue form, and placing it in the mouth of une femme distinguée. Most readers, feminine and monogamic, will remark that the lady shows little heart or natural affection; the severe calm of her judgment and reasoning faculties, and the soundness of her physiology, can not be doubted.
“Great Salt Lake City, Jan. 12, 1854.
“DEAR SISTER,--Your letter of October 2 was received on yesterday. My joy on its reception was more than I can express. I had waited so long for your answer to our last, that I had almost concluded my friends were offended, and would write to me no more. Judge, then, of my joy when I read the sentiments of friendship and of sisterly affection expressed in your letter.
“We are all well here, and are prosperous and happy in our family circle. My children, four in number, are healthy and cheerful, and fast expanding their physical and intellectual faculties. Health, peace, and prosperity have attended us all the day long.
“It seems, my dear sister, that we are no nearer together in our religious views than formerly. Why is this? Are we not all bound to leave this world, with all we possess therein, and reap the reward of our doings here in a never-ending hereafter? If so, do we not desire to be undeceived, and to know and to do the truth? Do we not all wish in our very hearts to be sincere with ourselves, and to be honest and frank with each other?
“If so, you will bear with me patiently while I give a few of my reasons for embracing and holding sacred that particular point in the doctrine of the Church of the Saints to which you, my dear sister, together with a large majority of Christendom, so decidedly object. I mean, a ‘plurality of wives.’
“I have a Bible which I have been taught from my infancy to hold sacred. In this Bible I read of a holy man named Abraham, who is represented as the friend of God, a faithful man in all things, a man who kept the commandments of God, and who is called in the New Testament ‘the father of the faithful.’ See James, ii., 23; Rom., iv., 16; Gal., iii., 8, 9, 16, 29.
“I find this man had a plurality of wives, some of which were called concubines. See Book of Genesis; and for his concubines, see xxv., 6.
“I also find his grandson Jacob possessed of four wives, twelve sons, and a daughter. These wives are spoken very highly of by the sacred writers as honorable and virtuous women. ‘These,’ say the Scriptures, ‘did build the house of Israel.’
“Jacob himself was also a man of God, and the Lord blessed him and his house, and commanded him to be fruitful and multiply. See Gen., xxx. to xxxv., and particularly xxxv., 10,11.
“I find also that the twelve sons of Jacob by these four wives became princes, heads of tribes, patriarchs, whose names are had in everlasting remembrance to all generations.
“Now God talked with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob frequently, and his angels also visited and talked with them, and blessed them and their wives and children. He also reproved the sins of some of the sons of Jacob for hating and selling their brother, and for adultery. But in all his communications with them he never condemned their family organization, but, on the contrary, always approved of it, and blessed them in this respect. He even told Abraham that he would make him the father of many nations, and that in him and his seed all the nations and kindreds of the earth should be blessed. See Gen., xviii., 17-19; also xii., 1-3. In later years I find the plurality of wives perpetuated, sanctioned, and provided for in the law of Moses.
“David the Psalmist not only had a plurality of wives, but the Lord himself spoke by the mouth of Nathan the prophet, and told David that he (the Lord) had given his master’s wives into his bosom; but because he had committed adultery with the wife of Uriah, and had caused his murder, he would take his wives and give them to a neighbor of his, etc. See 2 Sam., xii., 7-11.
“Here, then, we have the Word of the Lord not only sanctioning polygamy, but actually giving to King David the wives of his master (Saul), and afterward taking the wives of David from him, and giving them to another man. Here we have a sample of severe reproof and punishment for adultery and murder, while polygamy is authorized and approved by the Word of God.
“But to come to the New Testament. I find Jesus Christ speaks very highly of Abraham and his family. He says, ‘Many shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God.’ Luke, xiii., 28, 29.
“Again he said, ‘If ye were Abraham’s seed ye would do the works of Abraham.’
“Paul the apostle wrote to the saints of his day, and informed them as follows: ‘As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ; and if ye are Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.’
“He also sets forth Abraham and Sarah as patterns of faith and good works, and as the father and mother of faithful Christians, who should, by faith and good works, aspire to be counted the sons of Abraham and daughters of Sarah.
“Now let us look at some of the works of Sarah, for which she is so highly commended by the apostles, and by them held up as a pattern for Christian ladies to imitate. ‘Now Sarah, Abram’s wife, bare him no children; and she had a handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. And Sarah said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid: it may be that I may obtain children of her. And Abram hearkened unto the voice of Sarah. And Sarah, Abram’s wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.’ See Gen., xvi., 1-3.
“According to Jesus Christ and the apostles, then, the only way to be saved is to be adopted into the great family of polygamists by the Gospel, and then strictly follow their examples.
“Again, John the Revelator describes the Holy City of the heavenly Jerusalem, with the names of the twelve sons of Jacob inscribed on the gates. Rev., xxi., 12.
“To sum up the whole, then, I find that polygamists were the friends of God; that the family and lineage of a polygamist were selected in which all nations should be blessed; that a polygamist is named in the New Testament as the father of the faithful Christians of after ages, and cited as a pattern for all generations; that the wife of a polygamist, who encouraged her husband in the practice of the same, and even urged him into it, and officiated in giving him another wife, is named as an honorable and virtuous woman, a pattern for Christian ladies, and the very mother of all holy women in the Christian Church, whose aspiration it should be to be called her daughters; that Jesus Christ has declared that the great fathers of the polygamic family stand at the head in the kingdom of good; in short, that all the saved of after generations should be saved by becoming members of a polygamic family; that all those who do not become members of it are strangers and aliens to the covenant of promise, the commonwealth of Israel, and not heirs according to the promise made to Abraham; that all people from the east, west, north, or south, who enter into the kingdom, enter into the society of polygamists, and under their patriarchal rule and government; indeed, no one can even approach the gates of heaven without beholding the names of twelve polygamists (the sons of four different women by one man) engraven in everlasting glory upon the pearly gates.
“My dear sister, with the Scriptures before me, I could never find it in my heart to reject the heavenly vision which has restored to man the fullness of the Gospel, or the Latter-Day prophets and apostles, merely because in this restoration is included the ancient law of family organization and government preparatory to the restoration of all Israel.
“But, leaving all Scripture, history, or precedent out of the question, let us come to Nature’s law. What, then, appears to be the great object of the marriage relations? I answer, the multiplying of our species, the rearing and training of children.
“To accomplish this object, natural law would dictate that a husband should remain apart from his wife at certain seasons, which, in the very constitution of the female, are untimely; or, in other words, indulgence should be not merely for pleasure or wanton desires, but mainly for the purpose of procreation.
“The mortality of nature would teach a mother that, during Nature’s process in the formation and growth of embryo man, her heart should be pure, her thoughts and affections chaste, her mind calm, her passions without excitement, while her body should be invigorated with every exercise conducive to health and vigor, but by no means subjected to any thing calculated to disturb, irritate, weary, or exhaust any of its functions.
“And while a kind husband should nourish, sustain, and comfort the wife of his bosom by every kindness and attention consistent with her situation and with his most tender affection, still he should refrain from all those untimely associations which are forbidden in the great constitutional laws of female nature, which laws we see carried out in almost the entire animal economy, human animals excepted.
“Polygamy, then, as practiced under the patriarchal law of God, tends directly to the chastity of women, and to sound health and morals in the constitutions of their offspring.
“You can read in the law of God, in your Bible, the times and circumstances under which a woman should remain apart from her husband, during which times she is considered unclean; and should her husband come to her bed under such circumstances, he would commit a gross sin both against the laws of nature and the wise provisions of God’s law, as revealed in his word; in short, he would commit an abomination; he would sin both against his own body, against the body of his wife, and against the laws of procreation, in which the health and morals of his offspring are directly concerned.
“The polygamic law of God opens to all vigorous, healthy, and virtuous females a door by which they may become honorable wives of virtuous men, and mothers of faithful, virtuous, healthy, and vigorous children.
“And here let me ask you, my dear sister, what female in all New Hampshire would marry a drunkard, a man of hereditary disease, a debauchee, an idler, or a spendthrift; or what woman would become a prostitute, or, on the other hand, live and die single, or without forming those inexpressibly dear relationships of wife and mother, if the Abrahamic covenant, or patriarchal laws of God, were extended over your State, and held sacred and honorable by all?
“Dear sister, in your thoughtlessness you inquire, ‘Why not a plurality of husbands as well as a plurality of wives?’ To which I reply, 1st. God has never commanded or sanctioned a plurality of husbands; 2d. ‘Man is the head of the woman,’ and no woman can serve two lords; 3d. Such an order of things would work death and not life, or, in plain language, it would multiply disease instead of children. In fact, the experiment of a plurality of husbands, or rather of one woman for many men, is in active operation, and has been for centuries, in all the principal towns and cities of ‘Christendom!’ It is the genius of ‘Christian institutions,’ falsely so called. It is the result of ‘Mystery Babylon, the great whore of all the earth.’ Or, in other words, it is the result of making void the holy ordinances of God in relation to matrimony, and introducing the laws of Rome, in which the clergy and nuns are forbidden to marry, and other members only permitted to have one wife. This law leaves females exposed to a life of single ‘blessedness,’ without husband, child, or friend to provide for or comfort them; or to a life of poverty and loneliness, exposed to temptation, to perverted affections, to unlawful means to gratify them, or to the necessity of selling themselves for lucre. While the man who has abundance of means is tempted to spend it on a mistress in secret, and in a lawless way, the law of God would have given her to him as an honorable wife. These circumstances give rise to murder, infanticide, suicide, disease, remorse, despair, wretchedness, poverty, untimely death, with all the attendant train of jealousies, heartrending miseries, want of confidence in families, contaminating disease, etc.; and, finally, to the horrible license system, in which governments called Christian license their fair daughters, I will not say to play the beast, but to a degradation far beneath them; for every species of the animal creation, except man, refrain from such abominable excesses, and observe in a great measure the laws of nature in procreation.
“I again repeat that Nature has constituted the female differently from the male, and for a different purpose. The strength of the female constitution is designed to flow in a stream of life, to nourish and sustain the embryo, to bring it forth, and to nurse it on her bosom. When Nature is not in operation within her in these particulars and for these heavenly ends, it has wisely provided relief at regular periods, in order that her system may be kept pure and healthy, without exhausting the fountain of life on the one hand, or drying up its river of life on the other, till mature age and an approaching change of worlds render it necessary for her to cease to be fruitful, and give her to rest a while, and enjoy a tranquil life in the midst of that family circle, endeared to her by so many ties, and which may be supposed, at this period of her life, to be approaching the vigor of manhood, and therefore able to comfort and sustain her.
“Not so with man. He has no such drawback upon his strength. It is his to move in a wider sphere. If God shall count him worthy of a hundred fold in this life of wives and children, and houses, and lands, and kindreds, he may even aspire to patriarchal sovereignty, to empire; to be the prince or head of a tribe or tribes; and, like Abraham of old, be able to send forth, for the defense of his country, hundreds and thousands of his own warriors, born in his own house.
“A noble man of God, who is full of the Spirit of the Most High, and is counted worthy to converse with Jehovah or with the Son of God, and to associate with angels and the spirits of just men made perfect--one who will teach his children, and bring them up in the light of unadulterated and eternal truth--is more worthy of a hundred wives and children than the ignorant slave of passion, or of vice and folly, is to have one wife and one child. Indeed, the God of Abraham is so much better pleased with one than with the other, that he would even take away the one talent, which is habitually abused, neglected, or put to an improper use, and give it to him who has ten talents.
“In the patriarchal order of family government the wife is bound to the law of her husband. She honors, ‘calls him lord,’ even as Sarah obeyed and honored Abraham. She lives for him, and to increase his glory, his greatness, his kingdom, or family. Her affections are centred in her God, her husband, and her children.
“The children are also under his government worlds without end. ‘While life, or thought, or being lasts, or immortality endures,’ they are bound to obey him as their father and king.
“He also has a head to whom he is responsible. He must keep the commandments of God and observe his laws. He must not take a wife unless she is given to him by the law and authority of God. He must not commit adultery, nor take liberties with any woman except his own, who are secured to him by the holy ordinances of matrimony.
“Hence a nation organized under the law of the Gospel, or, in other words, the law of Abraham and the patriarchs, would have no institutions tending to licentiousness; no adulteries, fornications, etc., would be tolerated. No houses or institutions would exist for traffic in shame, or in the life-blood of our fair daughters. Wealthy men would have no inducement to keep a mistress in secret, or unlawfully. Females would have no grounds for temptation in any such lawless life. Neither money nor pleasure could tempt them, nor poverty drive them to any such excess, because the door would be open for every virtuous female to form the honorable and endearing relationships of wife and mother in some virtuous family, where love, and peace, and plenty would crown her days, and truth and the practice of virtue qualify her to be transplanted with her family circle in that eternal soil where they might multiply their children without pain, or sorrow, or death, and go on increasing in numbers, in wealth, in greatness, in glory, might, majesty, power, and dominion, in worlds without end.
“Oh my dear sister, could the dark veil of tradition be rent from your mind--could you gaze for a moment on the resurrection of the just--could you behold Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their wives and children, clad in the bloom, freshness, and beauty of immortal flesh and bones--clothed in robes of fine white linen, bedecked with precious stones and gold, and surrounded with an offspring of immortals as countless as the stars of the firmament or as the grains of sand upon the sea-shore, over which they reign as kings and queens forever and ever, you would then know something of the weight of those words of the sacred writer which are recorded in relation to the four wives of Jacob, the mothers of the twelve patriarchs, namely, ‘These did build the house of Israel.’
“Oh that my dear kindred could but realize that they have need to repent of the sins, ignorance, and traditions of those perverted systems which are misnamed ‘Christianity,’ and be baptized--buried in the water, in the likeness of the death and burial of Jesus Christ, and rise to newness of life in the likeness of his resurrection; receive his Spirit by the laying on of the hands of an apostle, according to promise, and forsake the world and the pride thereof. Thus they would be adopted into the family of Abraham, become his sons and daughters, see and enjoy for themselves the visions of the Spirit of eternal truth, which bear witness of the family order of heaven, and the beauties and glories of eternal kindred ties, for my pen can never describe them.
“Dear, dear kindred: remember, according to the New Testament, and the testimony of an ancient apostle, if you are ever saved in the kingdom of God, it must be by being adopted into the family of polygamists--the family of the great patriarch Abraham; for in his seed, or family, and not out of it, ‘shall all the nations and kindreds of the earth be blessed.’
“You say you believe polygamy is ‘licentious;’ that it is ‘abominable,’ ‘beastly,’ etc.; ‘the practice only of the most barbarous nations, or of the Dark Ages, or of some great or good men who were left to commit gross sins.’ Yet you say you are anxious for me to be converted to your faith; and that we may see each other in this life, and be associated in one great family in that life which has no end.
“Now, in order to comply with your wishes, I must renounce the Old and New Testaments; must count Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their families, as licentious, wicked, beastly, abominable characters; Moses, Nathan, David, and the prophets, no better. I must look upon the God of Israel as partaker in all these abominations, by holding them in fellowship; and even as a minister of such iniquity, by giving King Saul’s wives into King David’s bosom, and afterward by taking David’s wives from him, and giving them to his neighbor. I must consider Jesus Christ, and Paul, and John, as either living in a dark age, as full of the darkness and ignorance of barbarous climes, or else willfully abominable and wicked in fellowshiping polygamists, and representing them as fathers of the faithful and rulers in heaven. I must doom them all to hell, with adulterers, fornicators, etc., or else, at least, assign to them some nook or corner in heaven, as ignorant persons, who, knowing but little, were beaten with few stripes; while, by analogy, I must learn to consider the Roman popes, clergy, and nuns, who do not marry at all, as foremost in the ranks of glory, and those Catholics and Protestants who have but one wife as next in order of salvation, glory, immortality, and eternal life.
“Now, dear friends, much as I long to see you, and dear as you are to me, I can never come to these terms. I feel as though the Gospel had introduced me into the right family, into the right lineage, and into good company. And, besides all these considerations, should I ever become so beclouded with unbelief of the Scriptures and heavenly institutions as to agree with my kindred in New Hampshire in theory, still my practical circumstances are different, and would, I fear, continue to separate us by a wide and almost impassable gulf.
“For instance, I have (as you see, in all good conscience, founded on the Word of God) formed family and kindred ties which are inexpressibly dear to me, and which I can never bring my feelings to consent to dissolve. I have a good and virtuous husband whom I love. We have four little children which are mutually and inexpressibly dear to us. And, besides this, my husband has seven other living wives, and one who has departed to a better world. He has in all upward of twenty-five children. All these mothers and children are endeared to me by kindred ties, by mutual affection, by acquaintance and association; and the mothers in particular, by mutual and long-continued exercises of toil, patience, long-suffering, and sisterly kindness. We all have our imperfections in this life; but I know that these are good and worthy women, and that my husband is a good and worthy man; one who keeps the commandments of Jesus Christ, and presides in his family like an Abraham. He seeks to provide for them with all diligence; he loves them all, and seeks to comfort them and make them happy. He teaches them the commandments of Jesus Christ, and gathers them about him in the family circle to call upon his God, both morning and evening. He and his family have the confidence, esteem, good-will, and fellowship of this entire Territory, and of a wide circle of acquaintances in Europe and America. He is a practical teacher of morals and religion, a promoter of general education, and at present occupies an honorable seat in the Legislative Council of this Territory.
“Now, as to visiting my kindred in New Hampshire, I would be pleased to do so were it the will of God. But, first, the laws of that State must be so modified by enlightened legislation, and the customs and consciences of its inhabitants, and of my kindred, so altered, that my husband can accompany me with all his wives and children, and be as much respected and honored in his family organization and in his holy calling as he is at home, or in the same manner as the patriarch Jacob would have been respected had he, with his wives and children, paid a visit to his kindred. As my husband is yet in his youth, as well as myself, I fondly hope we shall live to see that day; for already the star of Jacob is in the ascendency; the house of Israel is about to be restored; while ‘Mystery Babylon,’ with all her institutions, awaits her own overthrow. Till this is the case in New Hampshire, my kindred will be under the necessity of coming here to see us, or, on the other hand, we will be mutually compelled to forego the pleasure of each other’s company.
“You mention in your letter that Paul the apostle recommended that bishops be the husband of one wife. Why this was the case I do not know, unless it was, as he says, that while he was among Romans he did as Romans did. Rome at that time governed the world, as it were; and, although gross idolaters, they held to the one-wife system. Under these circumstances, no doubt, the apostle Paul, seeing a great many polygamists in the Church, recommended that they had better choose for this particular temporal office men of small families, who would not be in disrepute with the government. This is precisely our course in those countries where Roman institutions still bear sway. Our elders there have but one wife, in order to conform to the laws of men.
“You inquire why Elder W., when at your house, denied that the Church of this age held to the doctrine of plurality. I answer that he might have been ignorant of the fact, as our belief on this point was not published till 1852. And had he known it, he had no right to reveal the same until the full time had arrived. God kindly withheld this doctrine for a time, because of the ignorance and prejudice of the nations of mystic Babylon, that peradventure he might save some of them.
“Now, dear sister, I must close. I wish all my kindred and old acquaintances to see this letter, or a copy thereof, and that they will consider it as if written to themselves. I love them dearly, and greatly desire and pray for their salvation, and that we may all meet with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God.
“Dear sister, do not let your prejudices and traditions keep you from believing the Bible, nor the pride, shame, or love of the world keep you from your seat in the kingdom of heaven, among the royal family of polygamists. Write often and freely.
“With sentiments of the deepest affection and kindred feeling, I remain, dear sister, your affectionate sister,
“BELINDA MARDEN PRATT.”
XI. Last Days at Great Salt Lake City
I now terminate my observations upon the subject of Mormonism. It will be remarked that the opinions of others--not my own--have been recorded as carefully as my means of study have permitted, and that facts, not theories, have been the object of this dissertation.
[MORMONISM THE FAITH OF THE POOR.]
It will, I think, be abundantly evident that Utah Territory has been successful in its colonization. Every where, indeed, in the New World, the stranger wonders that a poor man should tarry in Europe, or that a rich man should remain in America; nothing but the strongest chains of habit and vis inertiæ can reconcile both to their miserable lots. I can not help thinking that, morally and spiritually, as well as physically, the protégés of the Perpetual Emigration Fund gain by being transferred to the Far West. Mormonism is emphatically the faith of the poor, and those acquainted with the wretched condition of the English mechanic, collier, and agricultural laborer--it is calculated that a million of them exist on £25 per annum--who, after a life of ignoble drudgery, of toiling through the year from morning till night, are ever threatened with the work-house, must be of the same opinion. Physically speaking, there is no comparison between the conditions of the Saints and the class from which they are mostly taken. In point of mere morality, the Mormon community is perhaps purer than any other of equal numbers.[223] I have no wish to commend their spiritual, or, rather, their materialistic vagaries--a materialism so leveling in its unauthorized deductions that even the materialist must reject it; but with the mind as with the body, bad food is better than none. When wealth shall be less unequally distributed in England, thus doing away with the contrast of excessive splendor and utter destitution, and when Home Missions shall have done their duty in educating and evangelizing the unhappy pariahs of town and country, the sons of the land which boasts herself to be the foremost among the nations will blush no more to hear that the Mormons or Latter-Day Saints are mostly English.
[223] I refer the reader to Appendix IV.
About the middle of September the time of my departure drew nigh. Judge Flennikin found a change of venue to Carson Valley necessary; Thomas, his son, was to accompany him, and the Territorial marshal, Mr. Grice--a quondam volunteer in the Mexican War--was part of the cortége. Escort and ambulance had been refused; it was imperative to find both. Several proposals were made and rejected. At last an eligible presented himself. Mr. Kennedy, an Irishman from the neighborhood of Dublin, and an incola of California, where evil fate had made him a widower, had “swapped” stock, and was about to drive thirty-three horses and mules to the “El Dorado of the West.” For the sum of $150 each he agreed to convey us, to provide an ambulance which cost him $300, and three wagons which varied in price from $25 to $75. We had reason to think well of his probity, concerning which we had taken counsel; and as he had lost a horse or two, and had received a bullet through the right arm in an encounter with the Yuta Indians near Deep Creek on the 3d of July of the same year, we had little doubt of his behaving with due prudence. He promised also to collect a sufficient armed party; and as the road had lately seen troubles--three drivers had been shot and seventeen Indians had been reported slain in action by the federal troops--we were certain that he would keep his word. It was the beginning of the hungry season, when the Indians would be collecting their pine nuts and be plotting onslaughts upon the spring emigrants.
I prepared for difficulties by having my hair “shingled off” till my head somewhat resembled a pointer’s dorsum, and deeply regretted having left all my wigs behind me. The marshal undertook to lay in our provisions: we bought flour, hard bread or biscuit, eggs and bacon, butter, a few potted luxuries, not forgetting a goodly allowance of whisky and korn schnapps, whose only demerit was that it gave a taste to the next morning. The traveling canteen consisted of a little china, tin cups and plates, a coffee-pot, frying-pan, and large ditto for bread-baking, with spoons, knives, and forks.
[ADIEUX.]
The last preparations were soon made. I wrote to my friends, among others to Dr. Norton Shaw, who read out the missive magno cum risu audientium, bought a pair of leather leggins for $5, settled with M. Gebow, a Gamaliel at whose feet I had sat as a student of the Yuta dialect, and defrayed the expenses of living, which, though the bill was curiously worded,[224] were exemplarily inexpensive. Colonel Stambaugh favored me with a parting gift, the “Manual of Surveying Instructions,” which I preserve as a reminiscence, and a cocktail whose aroma still lingers in my olfactories. My last evening was spent with Mr. Stambaugh, when Mr. John Taylor was present, and where, with the kindly aid of Madam, we drank a café au lait as good as the Café de Paris affords. I thanked the governor for his frank and generous hospitality, and made my acknowledgments to his amiable wife. All my adieux were upon an extensive scale, the immediate future being somewhat dark and menacing.
[224] The bill in question:
Gt. S. L. City, September 18th, 1860.
Captain Burten to James Townsend, Dr.
Aug. 27. 14 Bottle Beer 600 Belt & Scabbard 500 Cleaning Vest and Coat 250 2 Bottles Branday 450 Washing 525 to Cash, five dollars 500 to 3 weaks 3 days Bord 3425 ----- 62·50
Cash, five dollars 500 ----- 67·50
[“ALL ABOORD.”]
The start in these regions is coquettish as in Eastern Africa. We were to depart on Wednesday, the 19th of September, at 8 A.M.--then 10 A.M.--then 12 A.M.--then, after a deprecatory visit, on the morrow. On the morning of the eventful next day, after the usual amount of “smiling,” and a repetition of adieux, I found myself “all aboord,” wending southward, and mentally ejaculating Hierosolymam quando revisam?
[MOUNT NEBO.]
XII. To Ruby Valley
Mounted upon a fine mule, here worth $240, and “bound” to fetch in California $400, and accompanying a Gentile youth who answered to the name of Joe, I proceeded to take my first lesson in stock-driving. We were convoying ten horses, which, not being wild, declined to herd together, and, by their straggling, made the task not a little difficult to a tyro. The road was that leading to Camp Floyd before described. At the Brewery near Mountain Point we found some attempts at a station, and were charged $1 50 for frijoles, potatoes, and bread: among other decorations on the wall was a sheet of prize-fighters, in which appeared the portraiture of an old man, once the champion of the light weights in the English ring, now a Saint in Great Salt Lake City. The day was fine and wondrous clear, affording us a splendid back view of the Happy Valley before it was finally shut out from sight, and the Utah Lake looked a very gem of beauty, a diamond in its setting of steely blue mountains. After fording the Jordan we were overtaken by Mr. Kennedy, who had been delayed by more last words, and at the dug-out we drank beer with Shropshire Joe the Mormon, who had been vainly attempting to dig water by a divining rod of peach-tree. When moonlight began to appear, Joe the Gentile was ordered by the “boss” to camp out with the horses, where fodder could be found gratis, a commandment which he obeyed with no end of grumbling. It was deep in the night before we entered Frogtown, where a creaking little Osteria supplied us with supper, and I found a bed at the quarters of my friend Captain Heth, who obligingly insisted upon my becoming his guest.
The five days between the 20th and the 26th of September sped merrily at my new home, Camp Floyd; not pressed for time, I embraced with pleasure the opportunity of seeing the most of my American brothers in arms. My host was a son of that Old Dominion of Queen Elizabeth, where still linger traces of the glorious Cavalier and the noble feudal spirit, which (alas!) have almost disappeared from the mother country; where the genealogical tree still hangs against the wall; where the principal families, the Nelsons, Harrisons, Pages, Seldens, and Allens, intermarry and bravely attempt to entail; and where the houses, built of brick brought out from England, still retain traces of the seventeenth century. A winter indeed might be passed most pleasantly on the banks of James River and in the west of Virginia--a refreshing winter to those who love, as I do, the traditions of our ancestors.
[SPREES.]
From Captain Heth I gathered that in former times, in Western America as in British India, a fair aborigine was not unfrequently the copartner of an officer’s hut or tent. The improved communication, however, and the frequency of marriage, have abolished the custom by rendering it unfashionable. The Indian squaw, like the Beebee, seldom looked upon her “mari” in any other light but her banker. An inveterate beggar, she would beg for all her relations, for all her friends, and all her tribe, rather than not beg at all, and the lavatory process required always to be prefaced with the bribe. Officers who were long thrown among the Prairie Indians joined, as did the Anglo-Indian, in their nautches and other amusements, where, if whisky was present, a cut or stab might momentarily be expected. The skin was painted white, black, and red, the hair was dressed and decorated, and the shirt was tied round the waist, while broadcloth and blanket, leggins and moccasins completed the costume. The “crack thing to do” when drinking with Indians, and listening to their monotonous songs and tales, was to imitate Indian customs; to become, under the influence of the jolly god, a Hatim Tai; exceedingly generous; to throw shirt to one man, blanket to another, leggins to a third--in fact, to return home in breech-cloth. Such sprees would have been severely treated by a highly respectable government; they have now, however, like many a pleasant hour in British India, had their day, and are sunk, many a fathom deep, in the genuine Anglo-Scandinavian gloom.
[ARMY GRIEVANCES.]
I heard more of army grievances during my second stay at Camp Floyd. The term of a soldier’s enlistment, five years, is too short, especially for the cavalry branch, and the facilities for desertion are enormous. Between the two, one third of the army disappears every year. The company which should number 84 has often only 50 men. The soldier has no time to learn his work; he must drive wagons, clear bush, make roads, and build huts and stables. When thoroughly drilled he can take his discharge, and having filled a purse out of his very liberal pay ($11 per mensem), he generally buys ground and becomes a landed proprietor. The officers are equally well salaried; but marching, countermarching, and contingent expenses are heavy enough to make the profession little better than it is in France. The Secretary of War being a civilian, with naturally the highest theoretical idea of discipline and command combined with economy, is always a martinet; no one can exceed the minutest order, and leave is always obtained under difficulties. As the larger proportion of the officers are Southern men, especially Virginians, and as the soldiers are almost entirely Germans and Irish--the Egyptians of modern times--the federal army will take little part in the ensuing contest. It is more than probable that the force will disband, break in two like the nationalities from which it is drawn. As far as I could judge of American officers, they are about as republican in mind and tone of thought as those of the British army. They are aware of the fact that the bundle of sticks requires a tie, but they prefer, as we all do, King Stork to King Log, and King Log to King Mob.
I took sundry opportunities of attending company inspections, and found the men well dressed and tolerably set up, while the bands, being German, were of course excellent. Mr. Chandless and others talk of the United States army discipline as something Draconian; severity is doubtless necessary in a force so constituted, but--a proof of their clemency--desertion is the only crime punishable by flogging. The uniform is a study. The States have attempted in the dress of their army, as in the forms of their government, a moral impossibility. It is expected to be at once cheap and soldier-like, useful and ornamental, light and heavy, pleasantly hot in the arctic regions, and agreeably cool under the tropics. The “military tailors” of the English army similarly forget the number of changes required in civilian raiment, and, looking to the lightness of the soldier’s kit, wholly neglect its efficiency, its capability of preserving the soldier’s life. The federal uniform consists of a brigand-like and bizarre sombrero, with Mephistophelian cock-plume, and of a blue broadcloth tunic, imitated from the old Kentuckian hunter’s surtout or wrapper, with terminations sometimes made to match, at other times too dark and dingy to please the eye. Its principal merit is a severe republican plainness, very consistent with the prepossessions of the people, highly inconsistent with the customs of military nations. Soldiers love to dress up Mars, not to clothe him like a butcher’s boy.
The position of Camp Floyd is a mere brick-yard, a basin surrounded by low hills, which an Indian pony would have little difficulty in traversing; sometimes, however, after the fashion of the land, though apparently easy from afar, the summits assume a mural shape, which would stop any thing but a mountain sheep. The rim shows anticlinal strata, evidencing upheavals, disruption, and, lastly, drainage through the kanyons which break the wall. The principal vegetation is the dwarf cedar above, the sage greenwood and rabbit-bush below. The only animals seen upon the plain are jackass-rabbits, which in places afford excellent sport. There are but few Mormons in the valley; they supply the camp with hay and vegetables, and are said to act as spies. The officers can not but remark the coarse features and the animal expression of their countenances. On the outskirts of camp are a few women that have taken sanctuary among the Gentiles, who here muster too strong for the Saints. The principal amusement seemed to be that of walking into and out of the sutlers’ stores, the hospitable Messrs. Gilbert’s and Livingston’s--a passe temps which I have seen at “Sukkur Bukkur Rohri”--and in an evening ride, dull, monotonous, and melancholy, as if we were in the vicinity of Hyderabad, Sindh.
I had often heard of a local lion, the Timpanogos Kanyon, and my friends Captains Heth and Gove had obligingly offered to show me its curiosities. After breakfast on the 23d of September--a bright warm day--we set out in a good ambulance, well provided with the materials of a two days’ picnic, behind a fine team of four mules, on the road leading to the Utah Lake. After passing Simple Joe’s dug-out we sighted the water once more; it was of a whitish-blue, like the milky waves of Jordan, embosomed in the embrace of tall and bald-headed hills and mountains, whose monarch was Nebo of the jagged cone. Where the wind current sets there are patches of white sand strewn with broken shells and dried water-weed. Near Pelican Point, a long, projecting rocky spit, there is a fine feeding-ground for geese and ducks, and swimmers and divers may always be seen dotting the surface. On the south rises a conspicuous buttress of black rock, and thirty miles off we could see enormous dust columns careering over the plain. The western part of the valley, cut with suncracks and nullahs, and dotted with boulders, shelves gradually upward from the selvage of the lake to small divides and dwarf-hill ranges, black with cedar-bush, and traversed only by wood roads. On the east is the best wheat country in this part of the Territory; it is said to produce 106 bushels per acre.
[JORDAN BRIDGE.]
After seventeen miles we crossed Jordan Bridge, another rickety affair, for which, being Mormon property, we paid 50 cents; had we been Saints the expense would have been one half. Two more miles led us to Lehi, a rough miniature of Great Salt Lake City, in which the only decent house was the bishop’s; in British India it would have been the collector and magistrate’s. My companions pointed out to me a hut in which an apostate Mormon’s throat had been cut by blackened faces. It is gratifying to observe that throughout the United States, as in the Old Country, all historical interest pales before a barbarous murder. As we advanced a wall of rock lay before us; the strata were in confusion as if a convulsion had lately shuddered through their frame, and tumbled fragments cumbered the base, running up by precipitous ascents to the middle heights. The colors were as grotesque: the foreground was a mass of emerald cane, high and bushy; beyond it, the near distance was pink with the beautiful bloom most unpoetically termed “hogweed,” and azure with a growth like the celebrated blue-grass of Kentucky; while the wall itself was a bloodstone dark green with cedar--which, 100 feet tall, was dwarfed to an inch--and red stained with autumnal maple, and below and around the brightest yellow of the faded willow formed the bezel, a golden rim.
[AMERICAN FORK.]
Two miles and a half from Lehi led us to American Fork, a soft sweet spring of snow-water, with dark shells adhering to white stones, and a quantity of trout swimming the limpid wave. The bridge was rickety and loose planked--in fact, the worst I ever saw in the United States, where, as a rule, the country bridges can never be crossed without fear and trembling; the moderate toll was $1 both ways. Three miles and a half more placed us at Battle Creek, where in 1853 the Yuta Indians fled precipitately from a Mormon charge. Six miles over a dusty beach conducted us to the mouth of the kanyon, a brown tract crossed by a dusty road and many a spring, and showing the base of the opposite wall encumbered with degraded masses, superimposed upon which were miniature castles. The mouth of the ravine was a romantic spot: the staples were sister giants of brown rock--here sheer, their sloping--where pines and firs found a precarious root-hold, and ranged in long perspective lines, while between them, through its channel, verdant with willow, and over a clear pebbly bed, under the screes and scaurs, coursed a mountain torrent more splendid than Ruknabad.
We forded the torrent and pursued the road, now hugging the right, then the left side of the chasm. The latter was exceedingly beautiful, misty with the blue of heaven, and rising till its solidity was blent with the tenuity of ether. The rest of the scenery was that of the great Cotton-wood Kanyon; painting might express the difference, language can not. After six miles of a narrow winding road, we reached the place of Cataracts, the principal lion of the place, and found that the season had reduced them to two thin milky lines coursing down bitumen-colored slopes of bare rock, bordered by shaggy forests of firs and cedars. The shrinking of the water’s volume lay bare the formation of the cascades, two steps and a slope, which at a happier time would have been veiled by a continuous sheet of foam.
After finding a suitable spot we outspanned, and, while recruiting exhausted nature, allowed our mules to roll and rest. After dining and collecting a few shells, we remounted and drove back through a magnificent sunset to American Fork, where the bishop, Mr. Lysander Dayton, of Ohio, had offered us bed and board. The good episkopos was of course a Mormon, as we could see by his two pretty wives; he supplied us with an excellent supper as a host, not as an innkeeper. The little settlement was Great Salt Lake City on a small scale--full of the fair sex; every one, by-the-by, appeared to be, or about to be, a mother. Fair, but, alas! not fair to us; it was verily
“Water, water every where, And not a drop to drink!”
[THE OLD “DANITE.”]
Before setting out homeward on the next day we met O. Porter Rockwell, and took him to the house with us. This old Mormon, in days gone by, suffered or did not suffer imprisonment for shooting or not shooting Governor Boggs, of Missouri: he now herds cattle for Messrs. Russell and Co. His tastes are apparently rural; his enemies declare that his life would not be safe in the City of the Saints. An attempt had lately been made to assassinate him in one of the kanyons, and the first report that reached my ears when en route to California was the murder of the old Danite by a certain Mr. Marony. He is one of the triumvirate, the First Presidency of “executives,” the two others being Ephe Hanks and Bill Hickman--whose names were loud in the land; they are now, however, going down; middle age has rendered them comparatively inactive, and the rising generation, Lot Huntington, Ike Clawson, and other desperadoes, whose teeth and claws are full grown, are able and willing to stand in their stead. Peter Rockwell was a man about fifty, tall and strong, with ample leather leggins overhanging his huge spurs, and the saw-handles of two revolvers peeping from his blouse. His forehead was already a little bald, and he wore his long grizzly locks after the ancient fashion of the United States, plaited and gathered up at the nape of the neck; his brow, puckered with frowning wrinkles, contrasted curiously with his cool, determined gray eye, jolly red face, well touched up with “paint,” and his laughing, good-humored mouth. He had the manner of a jovial, reckless, devil-may-care English ruffian. The officers called him Porter, and preferred him to the “slimy villains” who will drink with a man and then murder him. After a little preliminary business about a stolen horse, all conducted on the amiable, he pulled out a dollar, and sent to the neighboring distillery for a bottle of Valley Tan. The aguardiente was smuggled in under a cloth, as though we had been respectables in a Moslem country, and we were asked to join him in a “squar’ drink,” which means spirits without water. The mode of drinking was peculiar. Porter, after the preliminary sputation, raised the glass with cocked little finger to his lips, with a twinkle of the eye ejaculated “Wheat!” that is to say, “good,” and drained the tumbler to the bottom: we acknowledged his civility with a “here’s how,” and drank Kentucky-fashion, which in English is midshipman’s grog. Of these “squar’ drinks” we had at least four, which, however, did not shake Mr. Rockwell’s nerve, and then he sent out for more. Meanwhile he told us his last adventure--how, when ascending the kanyon, he suddenly found himself covered by two long rifles; how he had thrown himself from his horse, drawn his revolver, and crept behind a bush, and how he had dared the enemy to come out and fight like men. He spoke of one Obry, a Frenchman, lately killed in a street-quarrel, who rode on business from Santa Fé to Independence, about 600 miles, in 110 hours. Porter offered, for the fun of the thing, to excel him by getting over 900 in 144. When he heard that I was preparing for California, he gave me abundant good advice--to carry a double-barreled gun loaded with buck-shot; to “keep my eyes skinned,” especially in kanyons and ravines; to make at times a dark camp--that is to say, unhitching for supper, and then hitching up and turning a few miles off the road; ever to be ready for attack when the animals were being inspanned and outspanned, and never to trust to appearances in an Indian country, where the red varmint will follow a man for weeks, perhaps peering through a wisp of grass on a hill-top till the time arrives for striking the blow. I observed that, when thus speaking, Porter’s eyes assumed the expression of an old mountaineer’s, ever rolling as if set in quicksilver. For the purpose of avoiding “White Indians,” the worst of their kind, he advised me to shun the direct route, which he represented to be about as fit for traveling as is h--ll for a powder magazine, and to journey viâ Fillmore and the wonder-bearing White Mountains;[225] finally, he comforted me with an assurance that either the Indians would not attempt to attack us and our stock--ever a sore temptation to them--or that they would assault us in force and “wipe us out.”
[225] An emigrant company lately followed this road, and when obliged by the death of their cattle to abandon their kit, they found on the tramp a lump of virgin silver, which was carried to California: an exploring party afterward dispatched failed, however, to make the lead. At the western extremity of the White Mountains there is a mammoth cave, of which one mile has been explored: it is said to end in a precipice, and the enterprising Major Egan is eager to trace its course.
When the drinking was finished we exchanged a cordial poignée de main with Porter and our hospitable host, who appeared to be the crême de la crême of Utah County, and soon found ourselves again without the limits of Camp Floyd.
On the evening of the 25th of September, the judge, accompanied by his son and the Marshal of the Territory, entered the cantonment, and our departure was fixed for the next day. The morning of the start was spent in exchanging adieux and little gifts with men who had now become friends, and in stirrup-cups which succeeded one another at no longer intervals than quarter hours. Judge Crosby, who had arrived by the last mail, kindly provided me with fishing-tackle which could relieve a diet of eggs and bacon, and made me regret that I had not added to my outfit a Maynard. This, the best of breech-loading guns, can also be loaded at the muzzle; a mere carbine in size, it kills at 1300 yards, and in the United States costs only $40 = £8. The judge, a remarkable contrast to the usual Elijah Pogram style that still affects bird’s-eye or speckled white tie, black satin waistcoat, and swallow-tailed coat of rusty broadcloth, with terminations to match, had been employed for some time in Oregon and at St. Juan: he knew one of my expatriated friends--poor J. de C., whose exile we all lament--and he gave me introductions which I found most useful in Carson Valley. Like the best Americans, he spoke of the English as brothers, and freely owned the deficiencies of his government, especially in dealing with the frontier Indians.
We started from Lieutenant Dudley’s hospitable quarters, where a crowd had collected to bid us farewell. The ambulance, with four mules driven by Mr. Kennedy in person, stood at the door, and the parting stirrup-cup was exhibited with a will. I bade farewell with a true regret to my kind and gallant hosts, whose brotherly attentions had made even wretched Camp Floyd a pleasant séjour to me. At the moment I write it is probably desolate, the “Secession” disturbances having necessitated the withdrawal of the unhappies from Utah Territory.
[JOHNSTON’S SETTLEMENT.]
About 4 P.M., as we mounted, a furious dust-storm broke over the plain; perhaps it may account for our night’s méprise, which a censorious reader might attribute to our copious libations of whisky. The road to the first mail station, “Meadow Creek,” lay over a sage barren; we lost no time in missing it by forging to the west. After hopelessly driving about the country till 10 P.M. in the fine cool night, we knocked at a hut, and induced the owner to appear. He was a Dane who spoke but little English, and his son, “skeert” by our fierceness, began at once to boo-hoo. At last, however, we were guided by our “foreloper” to “Johnston’s settlement,” in Rock Valley, and we entered by the unceremonious process of pulling down the zigzag fences. After some trouble we persuaded a Mormon to quit the bed in which his wife and children lay, to shake down for us sleeping-places among the cats and hens on the floor, and to provide our animals with oats and hay. Mr. Grice, the marshal, one of the handiest of men, who during his volunteer service in Mexico had learned most things from carrying a musket to cooking a steak, was kind enough to prepare our supper, after which, still sorely laden with whisky dying within us, we turned in.
[A MEAN PLACE.]
To Meadow Creek. 27th September.
We rose with the dawn, the cats, and the hens, sleep being impossible after the first blush of light, and I proceeded to inspect the settlement. It is built upon the crest of an earth-wave rising from grassy hollows; the haystacks told of stock, and the bunch-grass on the borders of the ravines and nullahs rendered the place particularly fit for pasturage. The land is too cold for cereals: in its bleak bottoms frost reigns throughout the year; and there is little bench-ground. The settlement consisted of half a dozen huts, which swarmed, however, with women and children. Mr. Kennedy introduced us to a Scotch widow of mature years, who gave us any amount of butter and buttermilk in exchange for a little tea. She was but a lukewarm Mormon, declaring polygamy to be an abomination, complaining that she had been inveigled to a mean place, and that the poor in Mormondom were exceedingly poor. Yet the canny body was stout and fresh, her house was clean and neat, and she washed her children and her potatoes.
We had wandered twenty-five miles out of the right road, and were still distant fifteen to sixteen from the first mail station. For the use of the floor, flies, and permission to boil water, we paid our taciturn Mormon $2, and at noon, a little before the bursting of the dusty storm-gusts, which reproduced the horrors of Sindh, we found ourselves once more in the saddle and the ambulance. We passed by a cattle track on rolling ground dotted with sage and greasewood, which sheltered hosts of jackass-rabbits, and the sego with its beautiful lily-like flowers. After crossing sundry nullahs and pitch-holes with deep and rugged sides, we made the mail station at the west end of Rush Valley, which is about twenty miles distant from Camp Floyd. The little green bottom, with its rush-bordered sinking spring, is called by Captain Simpson “Meadow Creek.” We passed a pleasant day in revolver practice with Al. Huntington, the renowned brother of Lot, who had lately bolted to South California, in attempts at rabbit-shooting--the beasts became very wild in the evening--and in dining on an antelope which a youth had ridden down and pistoled. With the assistance of the station-master, Mr. Faust, a civil and communicative man, who added a knowledge of books and drugs to the local history, I compiled an account of the several lines of communication between Great Salt Lake City and California.
Three main roads connect the land of the Saints with the El Dorado of the West--the northern, the central, and the southern.
The northern road rounds the upper end of the Great Salt Lake, and falls into the valleys of the Humboldt and Carson Rivers. It was explored in 1845 by Colonel Frémont,[226] who, when passing over the seventy waterless miles of the western, a continuation of the eastern desert, lost ten mules and several horses. The “first overland trip” was followed in 1846 by a party of emigrants under a Mr. Hastings, who gave his name to the “cut-off” which has materially shortened the distance. The road has been carefully described in Kelly’s California, in Horn’s “Overland Guide,” and by M. Remy. It is still, despite its length, preferred by travelers, on account of the abundance of grass and water: moreover, there are now but two short stretches of desert.
[226] Explored is used in a modified sense. Every foot of ground passed over by Colonel Frémont was perfectly well known to the old trappers and traders, as the interior of Africa to the Arab and Portuguese pombeiros. But this fact takes nothing away from the honors of the man who first surveyed and scientifically observed the country. Among those who preceded Colonel Frémont, the most remarkable, perhaps, was Sylvester Pattie, a Virginian, who, having lost his wife in his adopted home on the Missouri, resolved to trap upon and to trace out the head-waters of the Yellow River. The little company of five persons, among whom were Pattie and his son, set out on the 20th of June, 1824, and on the 22d of August arrived at the head-waters of the Platte, where they found General Pratt proceeding toward Santa Fé. Pattie, in command of 116 men, crossed the dividing ridge, descended into the valley of the Rio Grand del Norto, entered Santa Fé, and trapped on the Gila River. The party broke up on the 27th of November, 1826, when Pattie, accompanied by his son and six others, descended the Colorado, and, after incredible hardships, reached the Hispano-American missions, where they were received with the customary inhumanity. The father died in durance vile; the son, after being released and vaccinated at San Diego, reached San Francisco, whence he returned home viâ Vera Cruz and New Orleans, after an absence of six years. The whole tale is well told in “Harper’s Magazine.”
[PIONEER EXPLORERS.]
The southern road, viâ Fillmore and San Bernardino, to San Pedro, where the traveler can embark for San Francisco, is long and tedious; water is found at thirty-mile distances; there are three deserts; and bunch and other grasses are not plentiful. It has one great merit, namely, that of being rarely snowed up, except between the Rio Virgen and Great Salt Lake City: the best traveling is in Spring, when the melting snows from the eastern hills fill the rivulets. This route has been traveled over by Messrs. Chandless and Remy, who have well described it in their picturesque pages. I add a few notes, collected from men who have ridden over the ground for several years, concerning the stations: the information, however, it will be observed, is merely hearsay.[227]
[227] The distance from Great Salt Lake City to San Bernardino is, according to my informant, about 750 miles, and has been accomplished in fourteen days. The road runs through Provo to Salt Cruz, formed by a desert of 50-60 miles, and making Sevier River the half-way point to the capital. At Corn Creek is an Indian farm, and Weaver is 64 miles from Fillmore. Cedar Spring is the entrance to Paravan Valley, where as early as 1806 there was a fort and a settlement. Then comes Fillmore, the territorial capital, and 96 miles afterward it passes through Paravan City in Little Salt Lake Valley. At Cold Creek it forks, the central road being that mostly preferred. The next station is Mountain Meadows, the Southern Rim of the Basin, celebrated for its massacre; ensues the Santa Clara River, and thence a total of 70 miles, divided into several stages, lead to the Rio Virgen. After following the latter for 20-30 miles, the path crosses the divide of Muddy River, and enters a desert 55-67 miles in breadth leading to Las Vegas. Thirty miles beyond that point lies a pretty water called “Mountain Springs,” a preliminary to “Dry Lake,” a second desert 40-45 miles broad, and ending at an alkaline water called Kingston Springs. The third desert, 40 miles broad, leads to a post established for the protection of emigrants, and called Bitter or Bidder’s Springs, 115 miles from Las Vegas. The next stage of 35 is to the Indian River, a tributary of the Colorado, whence there is another military establishment: the land is now Californian. Thence following and crossing the course of the stream, the traveler sights the Sierra Nevada. After 50 miles down the Mohave Kanyon is San Bernardino, once a thriving Mormon settlement, 90 miles from San Pedro and 120 from San Diego, where water conveyance is found to San Francisco.
The central route is called Egan’s by the Mormons, Simpson’s by the Gentiles. Mr. or Major Howard Egan is a Saint and well-known guide, an indefatigable mountaineer, who for some time drove stock to California in the employ of Messrs. Livingston, and who afterward became mail-agent under Messrs. Chorpenning and Russell. On one occasion he made the distance in twelve days, and he claims to have explored the present post-office route between 1850 and the winter of 1857-1858. Captain J. H. Simpson, of the federal army, whose itinerary is given in Appendix I., followed between May and June, 1859. He traveled along Egan’s path, with a few unimportant deviations, for 300 miles, and left it ten miles west of Ruby Valley, trending southward to the suite of the Carson River. On his return he pursued a more southerly line, and fell into Egan’s route about thirty miles west of Camp Floyd. The employés of the route prefer Egan’s line, declaring that on Simpson’s there is little grass, that the springs are mere fiumaras of melted snow, and that the wells are waterless. Bad, however, is the best, as the following pages will, I think, prove.
To Tophet. 28th September.
On a cool and cloudy morning, which at 10 A.M. changed into a clear sunny day, we set out, after paying $3 for three feeds, to make the second station. Our road lay over the seven miles of plain that ended Rush Valley: we saw few rabbits, and the sole vegetation was stunted sage. Ensued a rough divide, stony and dusty, with cahues and pitch-holes: it is known by the name of General Johnston’s Pass. The hills above it are gray and bald-headed, a few bristles of black cedar protruding from their breasts, and the land wears an uninhabitable look. After two miles of toil we halted near the ruins of an old station. On the right side of the road was a spring half way up the hill: three holes lay full of slightly alkaline water, and the surplus flowed off in a black bed of vegetable mud, which is often dry in spring and summer. At “Point Look-out,” near the counterslope of the divide, we left on the south Simpson’s route, and learned by a sign-post that the distance to Carson is 533 miles. The pass led to Skull Valley, of ominous sound. According to some, the name is derived from the remains of Indians which are found scattered about a fine spring in the southern parts. Others declare that the mortal remains of bison here lie like pavement-stones or cannon balls in the Crimean Valley of Death. Skull Valley stretches nearly southwest of the Great Salt Lake plain, with which it communicates, and its drainage, as in these parts generally, feeds the lake. Passing out of Skull Valley, we crossed the cahues and pitch-holes of a broad bench which rose above the edge of the desert, and after seventeen miles beyond the Pass reached the station which Mormons call Egan’s Springs, anti-Mormons Simpson’s Springs, and Gentiles Lost Springs.
Standing upon the edge of the bench, I could see the Tophet in prospect for us till Carson Valley: a road narrowing in perspective to a point spanned its grisly length, awfully long, and the next mail station had shrunk to a little black knob. All was desert: the bottom could no longer be called basin or valley: it was a thin fine silt, thirsty dust in the dry season, and putty-like mud in the spring and autumnal rains. The hair of this unlovely skin was sage and greasewood: it was warted with sand-heaps; in places mottled with bald and horrid patches of salt soil, while in others minute crystals of salt, glistening like diamond-dust in the sunlight, covered tracts of moist and oozy mud. Before us, but a little to the right or north, and nearly due west of Camp Floyd, rose Granite Mountain, a rough and jagged spine or hog’s-back, inhabited only by wolves and antelopes, hares and squirrels, grasshoppers, and occasionally an Indian family. Small sweet springs are found near its northern and southern points. The tradition of the country declares it to be rich in gold, which, however, no one dares to dig. Our road is about to round the southern extremity, wheeling successively S. and S.E., then W. and N.W., then S.W. and S.E., and S.W. and N.W.--in fact, round three quarters of the compass; and for three mortal days we shall sight its ugly frowning form. A direct passage leads between it and the corresponding point of the southern hill: we contemplate, through the gap, a blue ridge where lies Willow-Spring Station, the destination of our party after to-morrow; but the straight line which saves so much distance is closed by bogs for the greater part of the year, and the size of the wild sage would impede our wagon-wheels.
[THE GREAT DESERT.]
The great desert of Utah Territory extends in length about 300 miles along the western side of the Great Salt Lake. Its breadth varies: a little farther south it can not be crossed, the water, even where not poisonous, being insufficient. The formation is of bottoms like that described above, bench-lands, with the usual parallel and perfectly horizontal water-lines, leaving regular steps, as the sea settled down, by the gradual upheaval of the land. They mark its former elevation upon the sides of the many detached ridges trending mostly N. and S. Like the rim of the Basin, these hills are not a single continuous mountain range which might be flanked, but a series of disconnected protrusions above the general level of the land. A paying railway through this country is as likely as a profitable canal through the Isthmus of Suez: the obstacles must be struck at right angles, with such assistance as the rough kanyons and the ravines of various levels afford.
We are now in a country dangerous to stock. It is a kind of central point, where Pávant, Gosh Yuta (popularly called Gosh Ute), and Panak (Bannacks) meet. Watches, therefore, were told off for the night. Next morning, however, it was found that all had stood on guard with unloaded guns.
To Fish Springs. 29th September.
[OUR PARTY.]
At Lost Springs the party was mustered. The following was found to be the material. The Ras Kafilah was one Kennedy, an Irishman, whose brogue, doubly Dublin, sounded startlingly in the Great American Desert. On a late trip he had been victimized by Indians. The savages had driven off two of his horses into a kanyon within sight of the Deep-Creek Station. In the hurry of pursuit he spurred up the ravine, followed by a friend, when, sighting jerked meat, his own property, upon the trees, he gave the word sauve qui peut. As they whirled their horses the Yutas rushed down the hill to intercept them at the mouth of the gorge, calling them in a loud voice dogs and squaws, and firing sundry shots, which killed Kennedy’s horse and pierced his right arm. Most men, though they jest at scars before feeling a wound, are temporarily cowed by an infliction of the kind, and of that order was the good Kennedy.
The next was an excellent traveler, by name Howard. On the road between Great Salt Lake City and Camp Floyd I saw two men, who addressed me as Mr. Kennedy the boss, and, finding out their mistake, followed us to the place of rendezvous. The party, with one eye gray and the other black, mounted upon a miserable pony, was an American. After a spell at the gold diggings of California he had revisited the States, and he now wished to return to his adopted country without loss of time. He was a hardy, fine-tempered fellow, exceedingly skilled in driving stock. His companion was a Frenchman and ex-Zouave, who, for reasons best known to himself, declared that he came from Cuba, and that he had forgotten every word of Spanish. Like foreigners among Anglo-Scandinavians generally, the poor devil fared badly. He could not hold his own. With the most labor, he had the worst of every thing. He felt himself mal placé, and before the end of the journey he slunk away.
At Lost Springs we were joined by two Mormon fugitives, “pilgrims of love,” who had, it was said, secretly left the city at night, fearing the consequences of having “loved not wisely, but too well.” The first of the Lotharios was a Mr. R----, an English farrier-blacksmith, mounted upon an excellent horse and leading another. He soon took offense at our slow rate of progress, and, afflicted by the thought that the avenger was behind him, left us at Deep Creek, and “made tracks” to Carson City in ten days, with two horses and a total traveling kit of two blankets. We traced him to California by the trail of falsehoods which he left on the road. His comrade, Mr. A----, a New Englander, was also an apostate Mormon, a youth of good family and liberal education, who, after ruining himself by city sites and copper mines on Lake Superior, had permanently compromised himself with society by becoming a Saint. Also a Lothario, he had made his escape, and he proved himself a good and useful member of society. I could not but admire the acuteness of both these youths, who, flying from justice, had placed themselves under the protection of a judge. They reminded me of a debtor friend who found himself secure from the bailiff only within the walls of Spike Island or Belvidere Place, Southwark.
Another notable of the party was an apostate Jew and soi disant apostate Mormon who answered to the name of Rose. He had served as missionary in the Sandwich Islands, and he spoke Kanaka like English. His features were those which Mr. Thackeray loves to delineate; his accents those which Robson delights to imitate. He denied his connection with the Hebrews. He proved it by eating more, by driving a better bargain, by doing less work than any of the party. It was truly refreshing to meet this son of old Houndsditch in the land of the Saints, under the shadow of New Zion, and the only drawback to our enjoyment was the general suspicion that the honorable name of apostate covered the less respectable calling of spy. He contrasted strongly with Jim Gilston of Illinois, a lath-like specimen of humanity, some six feet four in length--a perfect specimen of the Indianized white, long hair, sun-tanned, and hatchet-faced; running like an ostrich, yelping like a savage, and ready to take scalp at the first provocation. He could not refrain, as the end of the journey drew nigh, from deserting without paying his passage. Mr. Colville, a most determined Yankee, far advanced in years, was equally remarkable. He had $90 in his pocket. He shivered for want of a blanket, and he lived on hard bread, bacon, and tea, of which no man was ever seen to partake. Such were the seven “free men,” the independent traders of the company. There were also six “broths of boys,” who paid small sums up to $40 for the benefit of our escort, and who were expected to drive and to do general work. Traveling soon makes friends. No illusions of amicitia, however, could blind my eyes to the danger of entering an Indian country with such an escort. Untried men for the most part, they would have discharged their weapons in the air and fled at the whoop of an Indian, all of them, including Jake the Shoshonee, who had been permitted to accompany us as guide, and excepting our stanch ones, Howard, “Billy” the colt, and “Brandy” the dog.
[“GENTLE ANNIE.”--“YOU BET.”]
The station was thrown somewhat into confusion by the presence of a petticoat, an article which in these regions never fails to attract presents of revolvers and sides of bacon. “Gentle Annie,” attended by three followers, was passing in an ambulance from California to Denver City, where her “friend” was. To most of my companions’ inquiries about old acquaintances in California, she replied, in Western phrase, that the individual subject of their solicitude had “got to git up and git,” which means that he had found change of air and scene advisable. Most of her sentences ended with a “you bet,” even under circumstances where such operation would have been quite uncalled for. So it is related that when Dr. P----, of Camp Floyd, was attending Mrs. A. B. C. at a most critical time, he asked her tenderly, “Do you suffer much, Mrs. C.?” to which the new matron replied, “You bet!”
We set out about noon, on a day hot as midsummer by contrast with the preceding nights, for a long spell of nearly fifty miles. Shortly after leaving the station the road forks. The left-hand path leads to a grassy spring in a dwarf kanyon near the southern or upper part of a river bottom, where emigrants are fond of camping. The hills scattered around the basin were of a dark metallic stone, sunburnt to chocolate. The strata were highly tilted up and the water-lines distinctly drawn. After eight miles we descended into the yellow silty bed of a bald and barren fiumara, which was not less than a mile broad. The good judge sighed when he contrasted it with Monongahela, the “river of the falling banks.” It flows northward, and sinks near the western edge of the lake. At times it runs three feet of water. The hills around are white-capped throughout the winter, but snow seldom lies more than a week in the bottoms.
After twenty miles over the barren plain we reached, about sunset, the station at the foot of the Dugway. It was a mere “dug-out”--a hole four feet deep, roofed over with split cedar trunks, and provided with a rude adobe chimney. The tenants were two rough young fellows--station-master and express rider--with their friend, an English bull-dog. One of them had amused himself by decorating the sides of the habitation with niches and Egyptian heads. Rude art seems instinctively to take that form which it wears on the banks of Nilus, and should some Professor Rafinesque discover these traces of the aborigines after a sepulture of a century, they will furnish materials for a rich chapter on ante-Columbian immigration. Water is brought to the station in casks. The youths believe that some seven miles north of the “Dugway” there is a spring, which the Indians, after the fashion of that folk, sensibly conceal from the whites. Three wells have been sunk near the station. Two soon led to rock; the third has descended 120 feet, but is still bone dry. It passes first through a layer of surface silt, then through three or four feet of loose, friable, fossilless, chalky lime, which, when slaked, softened, and, mixed with sand, is used as mortar. The lowest strata are of quartz gravel, forming in the deeper parts a hard conglomerate. The workmen complained greatly of the increasing heat as they descend. Gold now becomes uppermost in man’s mind. The youths, seeing me handle the rubbish, at once asked me if I was prospecting for gold.
After roughly supping we set out, with a fine round moon high in the skies, to ascend the “Dugway Pass” by a rough dusty road winding round the shoulder of a hill, through which a fiumara has burst its way. Like other Utah mountains, the highest third rises suddenly from a comparatively gradual incline, a sore formation for cattle, requiring draught to be at least doubled. Arriving on the summit, we sat down, while our mules returned to help the baggage-wagons, and amused ourselves with the strange aspect of the scene. To the north, or before us, and far below, lay a long broad stretch, white as snow--the Saleratus Desert, west of the Great Salt Lake. It wore a grisly aspect in the silvery light of the moon. Behind us was the brown plain, sparsely dotted with shadows, and dewless in the evening as in the morning. As the party ascended the summit with much noisy shouting, they formed a picturesque group--the well-bred horses wandering to graze, the white-tilted wagons with their panting mules, and the men in felt capotes and huge leather leggins. In honor of our good star which had preserved every hoof from accident, we “liquored up” on that summit, and then began the descent.
[THE DEVIL’S HOLE.]
Having reached the plain, the road ran for eight miles over a broken surface, with severe pitch-holes and wagon-tracks which have lasted many a month; it then forked. The left, which is about six miles the longer of the two, must be taken after rains, and leads to the Devil’s Hole, a curious formation in a bench under “High Mountain,” about ninety miles from Camp Floyd, and south, with a little westing, of the Great Salt Lake. The Hole is described as shaped like the frustrum of an inverted cone, forty feet in diameter above, twelve to fifteen below. As regards the depth, four lariats of forty feet each, and a line at the end, did not, it is said, reach the bottom. Captain Simpson describes the water as brackish. The drivers declare it to be half salt. The Devil’s Hole is popularly supposed to be an air-vent or shaft communicating with the waters of the Great Salt Lake in their subterraneous journey to the sea (Pacific Ocean). An object cast into it, they say, is sucked down and disappears; hence, if true, probably the theory.
[SLOUGHS.]
We chose the shorter cut, and, after eight miles, rounded Mountain Point, the end of a dark brown butte falling into the plain. Opposite us and under the western hills, which were distant about two miles, lay the station, but we were compelled to double, for twelve miles, the intervening slough, which no horse can cross without being mired. The road hugged the foot of the hills at the edge of the saleratus basin, which looked like a furrowed field in which snow still lingers. In places, warts of earth tufted with greasewood emerged from hard, flaky, curling silt-cakes; in others, the salt frosted out of the damp black earth like the miniature sugar-plums upon chocolate bonbons. We then fell into a saline resembling freshly-fallen snow. The whiteness changes to a slaty blue, like a frozen pond when the water still underlies it; and, to make the delusion perfect, the black rutted path looked as if lately cut out after a snow-storm. Weird forms appeared in the moonlight. A line of sand-heaps became a row of railroad cars; a raised bench was mistaken for a paling; and the bushes were any thing between a cow and an Indian. This part of the road must be terrible in winter; even in the fine season men are often compelled to unpack half a dozen times.
After ascending some sand-hills we halted for the party to form up in case of accident, and Mr. Kennedy proceeded to inspect while we prepared for the worst part of the stage--the sloughs. These are three in number, one of twenty and the two others of 100 yards in length. The tule, the bayonet-grass, and the tall rushes enable animals to pass safely over the deep slushy mud, but when the vegetation is well trodden down, horses are in danger of being permanently mired. The principal inconvenience to man is the infectious odor of the foul swamps. Our cattle were mad with thirst; however, they crossed the three sloughs successfully, although some had nearly made Dixie’s Land, in the second.
Beyond the sloughs we ascended a bench, and traveled on an improved road. We passed sundry circular ponds garnished with rush; the water is sulphury, and, according to the season, is warm, hot, or cold. Some of these debord, and send forth what the Somal would call Biya Gora, “night-flowing streams.” About 3 A.M., cramped with cold, we sighted the station, and gave the usual “Yep! yep!” A roaring fire soon revived us; the strong ate supper and the weak went to bed, thus ending a somewhat fatiguing day.
To Willow Creek. 30th September.
On this line there are two kinds of stations--the mail station, where there is an agent in charge of five or six “boys,” and the express station--every second--where there is only a master and an express rider. The boss receives $50-$75 per mensem, the boy $35. It is a hard life, setting aside the chance of death--no less than three murders have been committed by the Indians during this year--the work is severe; the diet is sometimes reduced to wolf-mutton, or a little boiled wheat and rye, and the drink to brackish water; a pound of tea comes occasionally, but the droughty souls are always “out” of whisky and tobacco. At “Fish Springs,” where there is little danger of savages, two men had charge of the ten horses and mules; one of these was a German Swiss from near Schaffhausen, who had been digging for gold to little purpose in California.
A clear cool morning succeeding the cold night aroused us betimes. Nature had provided an ample supply of warm water, though slightly sulphury, in the neighboring pot-holes, and at a little distance from the station was one conveniently cool. The fish from which the formation derives its name is a perch-like species, easily caught on a cloudy day. The men, like the citizens of Suez, accustom themselves to the “rotten water,” as strangers call it, and hardly relish the purer supplies of Simpson’s Springs or Willow Springs: they might have built the station about one mile north, near a natural well of good cool water, but apparently they prefer the warm bad.
The saleratus valley looked more curious in daylight than in moonlight. The vegetation was in regular scale; smallest, the rich bunch-grass on the benches; then the greasewood and the artemisia, where the latter can grow; and largest of all, the dwarf cedar. All was of lively hue, the herbage bright red, yellow, and sometimes green, the shrubs were gray and glaucous, the cedars almost black, and the rim of hills blue-brown and blue. We had ample time to contemplate these curiosities, for Kennedy, whose wits, like those of Hiranyaka, the mouse, were mightily sharpened by the possession of wealth, had sat up all night, and wanted a longer sleep in the morning. After a breakfast which the water rendered truly detestable, we hitched up about 10 A.M., and set out en route for Willow Springs.
[THE DESERT VIEW.]
About an hour after our departure we met the party commanded by Lieutenant Weed, two subaltern officers, ninety dragoons, and ten wagons; they had been in the field since May, and had done good service against the Gosh Yutas. We halted and “liquored up,” and, after American fashion, talked politics in the wilderness. Half an hour then led us to what we christened “Kennedy’s Hole,” another circular bowl, girt with grass and rush, in the plain under a dark brown rock, with black bands and scatters of stone. A short distance beyond, and also on the right of the road, lay the “Poison Springs,” in a rushy bed: the water was temptingly clear, but the bleached bones of many a quadruped skeleton bade us beware of it. After turning a point we saw in front a swamp, the counterpart of what met our eyes last night; it renewed also the necessity of rounding it by a long southerly sweep. The scenery was that of the Takhashshua near Zayla, or the delicious land behind Aden, the Arabian sea-board. Sand-heaps--the only dry spots after rain--fixed by tufts of metallic green salsolæ, and guarded from the desert wind by rusty cane-grass, emerged from the wet and oozy plain, in which the mules often sank to the fetlock. The unique and snowy floor of thin nitre, bluish where deliquescent, was here solid as a sheet of ice; there a net-work of little ridges, as if the salt had expanded by crystallization, with regular furrows worked by rain. After heavy showers it becomes a soft, slippery, tenacious, and slushy mud, that renders traveling exceeding laborious; the glare is blinding by day, and at night the refrigerating properties of the salt render the wind bitterly cold, even when the mercury stands at 50° F.
[SPORTING.]
We halted to bait at the half-way house, the fork of the road leading to Pleasant Valley, an unpleasant place, so called because discovered on a pleasant evening. As we advanced the land improved, the salt disappeared, the grass was splendidly green, and, approaching the station, we passed Willow Creek, where gophar-holes and snipes, willows and wild roses, told of life and gladdened the eye. The station lay on a bench beyond the slope. The express rider was a handsome young Mormon, who wore in his felt hat the effigy of a sword; his wife was an Englishwoman, who, as usual under the circumstances, had completely thrown off the Englishwoman. The station-keeper was an Irishman, one of the few met among the Saints. Nothing could be fouler than the log hut; the flies soon drove us out of doors; hospitality, however, was not wanting, and we sat down to salt beef and bacon, for which we were not allowed to pay. The evening was spent in setting a wolf-trap, which consisted of a springy pole and a noose: we strolled about after sunset with a gun, but failed to bag snipe, wild-fowl, or hare, and sighted only a few cunning old crows, and black swamp-birds with yellow throats. As the hut contained but one room, we slept outside. The Gosh Yuta are apparently not a venturesome people; still, it is considered advisable at times to shift one’s sleeping quarters, and to acquire the habit of easily awaking.
To Deep Creek and halt. 1st and 2d of October, 1860.
A “little war” had been waging near Willow Springs. In June the station was attacked by a small band of Gosh Yuta, of whom three were shot and summarily scalped; an energetic proceeding, which had prevented a repetition of the affair. The savages, who are gathering their pine-nut harvest, and are driven by destitution to beg at the stations, to which one meal a week will attach them, are now comparatively peaceful: when the emigration season recommences they are expected to be troublesome, and their numbers--the Pa Yutas can bring 12,000 warriors into the field--render them formidable. “Jake,” the Shoshonee, who had followed us from Lost Springs, still considered his life in danger; he was as unwilling to wend his way alone as an Arab Bedouin or an African negro in their respective interiors. With regard to ourselves, Lieutenant Weed had declared that there was no danger; the station people thought, on the contrary, that the snake, which had been scotched, not killed, would recover after the departure of the soldiers, and that the work of destruction had not been carried on with sufficient vigor.
At 6 A.M. the thermometer showed 45° F.; we waited two hours, till the world had time to warm. After six miles we reached “Mountain Springs,” a water-sink below the bench-land, tufted round with cotton-wood, willow, rose, cane, and grass. On our right, or eastward, lay Granite Rock, which we had well-nigh rounded, and through a gap we saw Lost-Springs Station, distant apparently but a few hours’ canter. Between us, however, lay the horrible salt plain--a continuation of the low lands bounding the western edge of the Great Salt Lake--which the drainage of the hills over which we were traveling inundates till June.
After twelve miles over the bench we passed a dark rock, which protects a water called Reading’s Springs, and we halted to form up at the mouth of Deep-Creek Kanyon. This is a dangerous gorge, some nine miles long, formed by a water-course which sheds into the valley of the Great Salt Lake. Here I rode forward with “Jim,” a young express rider from the last station, who volunteered much information upon the subject of Indians. He carried two Colt’s revolvers, of the dragoon or largest size, considering all others too small. I asked him what he would do if a Gosh Yuta appeared. He replied that if the fellow were civil he might shake hands with him, if surly he would shoot him; and, at all events, when riding away, that he would keep a “stirrup eye” upon him: that he was in the habit of looking round corners to see if any one was taking aim, in which case he would throw himself from the saddle, or rush on, so as to spoil the shooting--the Indians, when charged, becoming excited, fire without effect. He mentioned four Red Men who could “draw a bead” against any white; usually, however, they take a minute to load; they require a long aim, and they stint their powder. He pointed out a place where Miller, one of the express riders, had lately been badly wounded, and lost his horse. Nothing, certainly, could be better fitted for an ambuscade than this gorge, with its caves and holes in snow-cuts, earth-drops, and lines of strata, like walls of rudely-piled stone; in one place we saw the ashes of an Indian encampment; in another, a whirlwind, curling, as smoke would rise, from behind a projecting spur, made us advance with the greatest caution.
As we progressed the valley opened out, and became too broad to be dangerous. Near the summit of the pass the land is well lined with white sage, which may be used as fodder, and a dwarf cedar adorns the hills. The ground gives out a hollow sound, and the existence of a spring in the vicinity is suspected. Descending the western water-shed, we sighted, in Deep-Creek Valley, St. Mary’s County, the first patch of cultivation since leaving Great Salt Lake. The Indian name is Aybá-pá, or the Clay-colored Water; pity that America and Australia have not always preserved the native local terms. It is bisected by a rivulet in which three streamlets from the southern hills unite; like these features generally, its course is northward till it sinks: fields extend about one mile from each bank, and the rest of the yellow bottom is a tapestry of wire grass and wheat grass. An Indian model farm had been established here; the war, however, prevented cultivation; the savages had burned down the house, and several of them had been killed by the soldiers. On the west of the valley were white rocks of the lime used for mortar: the hills also showed lias and marble-like limestones. The eastern wall was a grim line of jagged peaks, here bare with granite, there black with cedar; they are crossed by a short cut leading to the last station, which, however, generally proves the longest way, and in a dark ravine Kennedy pointed out the spot where he had of late nearly left his scalp. Coal is said to be found there in chunks, and gold is supposed to abound; the people, however, believing that the valley can not yet support extensive immigration, conceal it probably by “counsel.”
[DEEP-CREEK STATION.--MR. WADDINGTON.]
At 4 P.M. we reached the settlement, consisting of two huts and a station-house, a large and respectable-looking building of unburnt brick, surrounded by fenced fields, water-courses, and stacks of good adobe. We were introduced to the Mormon station-master, Mr. Sevier, and others. They are mostly farm-laborers, who spend the summer here and supply the road with provisions: in the winter they return to Grantsville, where their families are settled. Among them was a Mr. Waddington, an old Pennsylvanian and a bigoted Mormon. It is related of him that he had treasonably saved 300 Indians by warning them of an intended attack by the federal troops. He spoke strongly in favor of the despised Yutas, declared that they are ready to work, and can be led to any thing by civility. The anti-Mormons declared that his praise was for interested motives, wishing the savages to labor for him gratis; and I observed that when Mr. Waddington started to cut wood in the kanyon, he set out at night, lest his dust should be seen by his red friends.
The Mormons were not wanting in kindness; they supplied us with excellent potatoes, and told us to make their house our home. We preferred, however, living and cooking afield. The station was dirty to the last degree: the flies suggested the Egyptian plague; they could be brushed from the walls in thousands; but, though sage makes good brooms, no one cares to sweep clean. This, I repeat, is not Mormon, but Western: the people, like the Spaniards, apparently disdain any occupation save that of herding cattle, and will do so till the land is settled. In the evening Jake the Shoshonee came in, grumbling loudly because he had not been allowed to ride; he stood cross-legged like an African, ate a large supper at the station, and a second with us. No wonder that the savage in civilization suffers, like the lady’s lapdog, from “liver.” He was, however, a first-rate hand in shirking any work except that of peering and peeping into every thing; neither Gospel nor gunpowder can reform this race. Mr.R----, the English farrier and Lothario, left us on this day, after a little quarrel with Kennedy. We were glad to receive permission to sleep upon the loose wheat in an inner room: at 8 A.M. the thermometer had shown 59° F., but on this night ice appeared in the pails.
The next day was a halt; the stock wanted rest and the men provisions. A “beef”--the Westerns still retain the singular of “beeves”--was killed, and we obtained a store of potatoes and wheat. Default of oats, which are not common, this heating food is given to horses--12 lbs. of grain to 14 of long forage--and the furious riding of the Mormons is the only preventive of its evil effects. The people believe that it causes stumbling by the swelling of the fetlock and knee joint; similarly every East Indian ghorewalla will declare that wheaten bread makes a horse tokkar khana--“eat trips.” The employés of the station were quiet and respectable, a fact attributed by some of our party to the want of liquor, which is said to cause frequent fights. Our party was less peaceable; there had been an extensive prigging of blankets; the cold now made them valuable, and this drove the losers “fighting mad.”
En route again. 3d October.
The severity of the last night made us active; the appearance of deep snow upon the mountains and of ice in the valleys was an intelligible hint that the Sierra Nevada which lay before us would be by no means an easy task. Despite, therefore, the idleness always engendered by a halt, and the frigid blasts which poured down from the eastern hills, where rain was falling in torrents, we hitched up, bade adieu to our Mormon host, and set out about 4 P.M. Antelope Springs, the next station, was 30 miles distant; we resolved, therefore, to divide it, after the fashion of Asia and Africa, by a short forenoon march.
The road runs to the southwest down the Deep-Creek Valley, and along the left bank of the western rivulet. Near the divide we found a good bottom, with plenty of water and grass; the only fuel was the sage-bush, which crackled merrily, like thorns, under the pot, but tainted the contents with its medicinal odor. The wagons were drawn up in a half circle to aid us in catching the mules; the animals were turned out to graze, the men were divided into watches, and the masters took up their quarters in the wagons. Age gave the judge a claim to the ambulance, which was admitted by all hands; I slept with “Scotch Joe,” an exceedingly surly youth, who apparently preferred any thing to work. At 8 P.M. a storm of wind and rain burst upon us from the S.W.: it was so violent that the wagons rocked before the blast, and at times the chance of a capsize suggested itself. The weather was highly favorable for Indian plundering, who on such nights expect to make a successful attack.
To the Wilderness. 4th October.
[EIGHT-MILE SPRINGS.]
We awoke early in the frigid S.W. wind, the thermometer showing 39° F. After a few hundred yards we reached “Eight-mile Springs,” so called from the distance to Deep Creek. The road, which yesterday would have been dusty to the hub, was now heavy and viscid; the rain had washed out the saleratus, and the sight and scent, and the country generally, were those of the environs of a horse-pond. An ugly stretch of two miles, perfectly desert, led to Eight-mile-Spring Kanyon, a jagged little ravine about 500 yards long, with a portaled entrance of tall rock. It is not, however, considered dangerous.
Beyond the kanyon lay another grisly land, if possible more deplorable than before; its only crops were dust and mud. On the right hand were turreted rocks, around whose base ran Indian trails, and a violent west wind howled over their summits. About 1 30 P.M. we came upon the station at Antelope Springs: it had been burned by the Gosh Yutas in the last June, and had never been rebuilt. “George,” our cook, who had been one of the inmates at the time, told us how he and his confrères had escaped. Fortunately, the corral still stood: we found wood in plenty, water was lying in an adjoining bottom, and we used the two to brew our tea.
[SHELL CREEK.]
Beyond Antelope Springs was Shell Creek, distant thirty miles by long road and eighteen by the short cut. We had some difficulty in persuading Kennedy to take the latter; property not only sharpens the intellect, it also generates prudence, and the ravine is a well-known place for ambush. Fortunately two express riders came in and offered to precede us, which encouraged us. About 3 P.M. we left the springs and struck for the mouth of the kanyon, which has not been named; Sevier and Farish are the rival claimants. Entering the jagged fir and pine-clad breach, we found the necessity of dismounting. The bed was dry--it floods in spring and autumn--but very steep, and in a hole on the right stood water, which we did not touch for fear of poison. Reaching the summit in about an hour we saw below the shaggy foreground of evergreens, or rather ever-blacks, which cast grotesque and exaggerated shadows in the last rays of day, the snowy-white mountains, gloriously sunlit, on the far side of Shell Creek. Here for the first time appeared the piñon pine (P. Monophyllus), which forms the principal part of the Indian’s diet; it was no beauty to look upon, a dwarfish tree, rendered shrub-like by being feathered down to the ground. The nut is ripe in early autumn, at which time the savages stow away their winter provision in dry ravines and pits. The fruit is about the size of a pistachio, with a decided flavor of turpentine, tolerably palatable, and at first laxative. The cones are thrown upon the fire, and when slightly burnt the nuts are easily extracted; these are eaten raw, or like the Hindoo’s toasted grains. The harvest is said to fail every second year. Last season produced a fine crop, while in this autumn many of the trees were found, without apparent reason but frost, dead.
We resumed the descent along a fiumara, which presently “sank,” and at 5 P.M. halted in a prairillon somewhat beyond. Bunch-grass, sage-fuel, and water were abundant, but the place was favorable for an attack. It is a golden rule in an Indian country never to pitch near trees or rocks that can mask an approach, and we were breaking it in a place of danger. However, the fire was extinguished early, so as to prevent its becoming a mark for Indians, and the pickets, placed on both sides of the ravine, were directed to lie motionless a little below the crest, and to fire at the first comer. I need hardly say we were not murdered; the cold, however, was uncommonly piercing.
To “Robber’s Roost.” 5th October.
We set out at 6 A.M. the next morning, through a mixture of snow and hail and howling wind, to finish the ravine, which was in toto eight miles long. The descent led us to Spring Valley, a bulge in the mountains about eight miles broad, which a sharp divide separates from Shell Valley, its neighbor. On the summit we fell into the line of rivulet which gives the low lands a name. At the foot of the descent we saw a woodman, and presently the station. Nothing could more want tidying than this log hut, which showed the bullet-marks of a recent Indian attack. The master was a Français de France, Constant Dubail, and an ex-Lancier: his mother’s gossip had received a remittance of 2000 francs from a son in California, consequently he had torn himself from the sein of sa pauvre mère, and with three others had started in search of fortune, and had nearly starved. The express riders were three roughs, of whom one was a Mormon. We passed our time while the mules were at bait in visiting the springs. There is a cold creek 200 yards below the station, and close by the hut a warm rivulet, said to contain leeches. The American hirudo, however, has a serious defect in a leech--it will not bite; the faculty, therefore, are little addicted to hirudination; country doctors rarely keep the villainous bloodsuckers, and only the wealthy can afford the pernicious luxury, which, imported from Spain, costs $12 per dozen, somewhat the same price as oysters at Nijni Novgorod.
The weather, which was vile till 10 A.M., when the glass showed 40° (F.), promised to amend, and as the filthy hole--still full of flies, despite the cold--offered no attraction, we set out at 2 P.M. for Egan’s Station, beyond an ill-omened kanyon of the same name. We descended into a valley by a regular slope--in proportion as we leave distance between us and the Great Salt Lake the bench formation on this line becomes less distinct--and traversed a barren plain by a heavy road. Hares and prairie-hens seemed, however, to like it, and a frieze of willow thicket at the western end showed the presence of water. We in the ambulance halted at the mouth of the kanyon; the stock and the boys had fallen far behind, and the place had an exceedingly bad name. But the cold was intense, the shades of evening were closing in, so we made ready for action, looked to the priming of gun and revolver, and then en avant! After passing that kanyon we should exchange the land of the Gosh Yuta for those of the more friendly Shoshonee.
[AN UGLY PLACE.]
An uglier place for sharp-shooting can hardly be imagined. The floor of the kanyon is almost flush with the bases of the hills, and in such formations, the bed of the creek which occupies the sole is rough and winding. The road was vile--now winding along, then crossing the stream--hedged in with thicket and dotted with boulders. Ahead of us was a rocky projection which appeared to cross our path, and upon this Point Dangerous every eye was fixed.
[COLD COMFORT.]
Suddenly my eye caught sight of one fire--two fires under the black bunch of firs half way up the hill-side on our left, and as suddenly they were quenched, probably with snow. Nothing remained but to hear the war-whoop, and to see a line of savages rushing down the rocks. We loosed the doors of the ambulance, that we might jump out, if necessary, and tree ourselves behind it; and knowing that it would be useless to return, drove on at our fastest speed, with sleet, snow, and wind in our faces. Under the circumstances, it was cold comfort to find, when we had cleared the kanyon, that Egan’s Station at the farther mouth had been reduced to a chimney-stack and a few charred posts. The Gosh Yutas had set fire to it two or three days before our arrival, in revenge for the death of seventeen of their men by Lieutenant Weed’s party. We could distinguish the pits from which the wolves had torn up the corpses, and one fellow’s arm projected from the snow. After a hurried deliberation, in which Kennedy swore, with that musical voice in which the Dublin swains delight, that “shure we were all kilt”--the possession of property not only actuates the mind, and adds industry to its qualities, it also produces a peculiar development of cautiousness--we unhitched the mules, tethered them to the ambulance, and planted ourselves behind the palisade, awaiting all comers, till the boys could bring re-enforcement. The elements fought for us: although two tongues of high land directly in front of us would have formed a fine mask for approach, the snow lay in so even a sheet that a prowling coyote was detected, and the hail-like sleet which beat fiercely on our backs would have been a sore inconvenience to a party attacking in face. Our greatest disadvantage was the extreme cold; it was difficult to keep a finger warm enough to draw a trigger. Thomas, the judgeling, so he was called, was cool as a cucumber, mentally and bodily: youths generally are. Firstly, they have their “preuves” to make; secondly, they know not what they do.
After an hour’s freezing, which seemed a day’s, we heard with quickened ears the shouts and tramp of the boys and the stock, which took a terrible load off the exile of Erin’s heart. We threw ourselves into the wagons, numbed with cold, and forgot, on the soft piles of saddles, bridles, and baggage, and under heaps of blankets and buffalos, the pains of Barahut. About 3 A.M. this enjoyment was brought to a close by arriving at the end of the stage, Butte Station. The road was six inches deep with snow, and the final ascent was accomplished with difficulty. The good station-master, Mr. Thomas, a Cambrian Mormon, who had, he informed me, three brothers in the British army, bade us kindly welcome, built a roaring fire, added meat to our supper of coffee and doughboy, and cleared by a summary process among the snorers places for us on the floor of “Robber’s Roost,” or “Thieves’ Delight,” as the place is facetiously known throughout the country-side.
Halt at “Robber’s Roost.” 6th October.
[THE WESTERN MAN’S HOME.]
The last night’s sound sleep was allowed to last through the morning. This day was perforce a halt: the old white mare and her colt had been left at the mouth of the kanyon, and one of the Shoshonee Indian servants of the station had been persuaded by a bribe of a blanket and some gunpowder to return for them. About noon we arose, expecting a black fog, and looked down upon Butte Valley, whose northern edge we had traversed last night. Snow still lay there--that bottom is rarely without frost--but in the fine clear sunny day, with the mercury at 43° F. in the shade, the lowest levels re-became green, the hill cedars turned once more black, earth steamed like a garment hung out to dry, and dark spots here and there mottled the hills, which were capped with huge turbans of muslin-like mist. While the Shoshonee is tracking and driving the old mare, we will glance around the “Robber’s Roost,” which will answer for a study of the Western man’s home.
It is about as civilized as the Galway shanty, or the normal dwelling-place in Central Equatorial Africa. A cabin fronting east and west, long walls thirty feet, with port-holes for windows, short ditto fifteen; material, sandstone and bog ironstone slabs compacted with mud, the whole roofed with split cedar trunks, reposing on horizontals which rested on perpendiculars. Behind the house a corral of rails planted in the ground; the inclosed space a mass of earth, and a mere shed in one corner the only shelter. Outside the door--the hingeless and lockless backboard of a wagon, bearing the wounds of bullets--and resting on lintels and staples, which also had formed parts of locomotives, a slab acting stepping-stone over a mass of soppy black soil strewed with ashes, gobs of meat offals, and other delicacies. On the right hand a load of wood; on the left a tank formed by damming a dirty pool which had flowed through a corral behind the “Roost.” There was a regular line of drip distilling from the caked and hollowed snow which toppled from the thick thatch above the cedar braces.
The inside reflected the outside. The length was divided by two perpendiculars, the southernmost of which, assisted by a half-way canvas partition, cut the hut into unequal parts. Behind it were two bunks for four men: standing bedsteads of poles planted in the ground, as in Australia and Unyamwezi, and covered with piles of ragged blankets. Beneath the frame-work were heaps of rubbish, saddles, cloths, harness, and straps, sacks of wheat, oats, meal, and potatoes, defended from the ground by underlying logs, and dogs nestled where they found room. The floor, which also frequently represented bedstead, was rough, uneven earth, neither tamped nor swept, and the fine end of a spring oozing through the western wall kept part of it in a state of eternal mud. A redeeming point was the fireplace, which occupied half of the northern short wall: it might have belonged to Guy of Warwick’s great hall; its ingle nooks boasted dimensions which one connects with an idea of hospitality and jollity; while a long hook hanging down it spoke of the bouillon-pot, and the iron oven of hot rolls. Nothing could be more simple than the furniture. The chairs were either posts mounted on four legs spread out for a base, or three-legged stools with reniform seats. The tables were rough-dressed planks, two feet by two, on rickety trestles. One stood in the centre for feeding purposes; the other was placed as buffet in the corner near the fire, with eating apparatus--tin coffee-pot and gamelles, rough knives, “pitchforks,” and pewter spoons. The walls were pegged to support spurs and pistols, whips, gloves, and leggins. Over the door, in a niche, stood a broken coffee-mill, for which a flat stone did duty. Near the entrance, on a broad shelf raised about a foot from the ground, lay a tin skillet and its “dipper.” Soap was supplied by a handful of gravel, and evaporation was expected to act towel. Under the board was a pail of water with a floating can, which enabled the inmates to supply the drainage of everlasting chaws. There was no sign of Bible, Shakspeare, or Milton; a Holywell-Street romance or two was the only attempt at literature. En revanche, weapons of the flesh, rifles, guns, and pistols, lay and hung all about the house, carelessly stowed as usual, and tools were not wanting--hammers, large borers, axe, saw, and chisel. An almost invariable figure in these huts is an Indian standing cross-legged at the door, or squatting uncomfortably close to the fire. He derides the whites for their wastefulness, preferring to crouch in parties of three or four over a little bit of fuel than to sit before a blazing log. These savages act, among other things, as hunters, bringing home rabbits and birds. We tried our revolvers against one of them, and beat him easily; yet they are said to put, three times out of four, an arrow through a keyhole forty paces off. In shooting they place the thumb and forefinger of the right hand upon the notch, and strengthen the pull by means of the second finger stretched along the bowstring. The left hand holds the whipped handle, and the shaft rests upon the knuckle of the index.
From Mr. Thomas we heard an account of the affair which took place near Egan’s Kanyon. In the last August, Lieutenant Weed happened to be “on a scout,” with seventeen mounted riflemen, after Indians. An express rider from the West had ridden up to the station, which, being in a hollow, can not be seen from afar, and found it surrounded by Gosh Yuta Indians. The fellows had tied up the master and the boy, and were preparing with civilized provisions a good dinner for themselves, to be followed by a little treat in the form of burning down the house and roasting their captives. The Indians allowed the soldiers brought up by the express rider to draw near, thinking that the dust was raised by fresh arrivals of their own people; and when charged, at once fled. The mounted riflemen were armed with revolvers, not with sabres, or they would have done considerable execution; as it was, seventeen of the enemy remained upon the field, besides those who were carried off by their friends. The Indian will always leave a scalped and wounded fellow-tribesman in favor of an unscalped corpse.
In the evening the Shoshonee returned, bringing with him the white mare and her colt, which he had recovered selon lui from the hands of two Gosh Yutas. The weather still held up; we had expected to be snowed up in five days or so; our departure, therefore, was joyfully fixed for the morrow.
To Ruby Valley. 7th October.
A frosty night was followed by a Tuscan day: a cold tramontana from the south, and a clear hot sun, which expanded the mercury at 10 A.M. to 70° F. After taking leave of the hospitable station-master, we resumed the road which ran up the short and heavy ascent, through a country here and there eighteen inches deep in snow, and abounding in large sage and little rabbits. A descent led into Long Valley, whose northern end we crossed, and then we came upon a third ascent, where, finding a sinking creek, a halt was called for lunch. The formation of the whole country is a succession of basins and divides. Ensued another twelve miles’ descent, which placed us in sight of Ruby Valley, and a mile beyond carried us to the station.
[RUBY VALLEY.]
Ruby Valley is a half-way house, about 300 miles from Great Salt Lake City, and at the same distance from Carson Valley. It derives its name from the small precious stones which are found like nuggets of gold in the crevices of primitive rock. The length of the valley is about 100 miles, by three or four broad, and springs are scattered in numbers along the base of the western mountains. The cold is said to be here more severe than in any place on the line of road, Spring Valley excepted. There is, however, excellent bench-land for grazing. In this season the scenery is really pretty. The white peaks tower over hill-land black with cedar, and this looks down upon the green bottom scattered over with white sage--winter above lying by the side of summer below.
[“UNCLE BILLY.”]
We were received at the Ruby-Valley Station by Colonel Rogers, better known as “Uncle Billy.” He had served in the troublous days of California as marshal, and has many a hairbreadth escape to relate. He is now assistant Indian agent, the superintendent of a government model farm, and he lives en garçon, having left his wife and children at Frogtown. We were soon introduced to the chief of the country, Chy̆ŭkŭpĭchyă (the “old man”), a word of unpronounceable slur, changed by whites into Chokop (“earth”). His lands are long to the north and south, though of little breadth. He commands about 500 warriors, and, as Uncle Billy is returning to Frogtown, he is collecting a large hunting-party for the autumnal battue. In 1849 his sister was wantonly shot by emigrants to California. He attacked the train, and slew in revenge five men, a fact with which we were not made acquainted till after our departure. His father and grandfather are both alive, but they have abdicated under the weight of years and infirmities, reserving their voices for the powwow.
We dined in the colonel’s stone hut, and then saw the lions feed; after us, Chokop and five followers sat down with knife and fork before a huge tureen full of soft pie, among which they did terrible execution, champing and chewing with the noisiness of wild beasts, and eating each enough for three able-bodied sailors. The chief, a young man twenty-five years old, had little to denote the Indian except vermilion where soap should have been; one of his companions, however, crowned with eagle’s feathers disposed in tulip shape, while the claws depended gracefully down his back, was an object worthy of Guinea. All were, however, to appearance, happy, and for the first time I heard an Indian really laugh outright. Outside squatted the common herd in a costume which explains the prevalence of rheumatism. The men were in rags, yet they had their coquetry, vermilion streaked down their cheeks and across their foreheads--the Indian fashion of the omnilocal rouge. The women, especially the elders, were horrid objects, shivering and half dressed in breech-cloths and scanty capes or tippets of wolf and rabbit skin: the existence of old age, however, speaks well for the race. Both are unclean; they use no water where Asiatics would; they ignore soap, and rarely repair to the stream, except, like animals, in hot weather.
We then strolled about the camp and called upon the two Mistresses Chokop. One was a buxom dame, broad and strong, with hair redolent of antelope marrow, who boasted of a “wikeap” or wigwam in the shape of a conical tent. The other, much her junior, and rather pretty, was sitting apart in a bower of bushes, with a newly-born pappoose in a willow cage to account for her isolation: the poor thing would have been driven out even in the depth of winter, and were she to starve, she must do without meat. As among the Jews, whenever the Great Father is angry with the daughters of Red Men, they sit apart; they never touch a cooking utensil, although it is not held impure to address them, and they return only when the signs of wrath have passed away. The abodes of the poorer clansmen were three-quarter circles of earth, sticks, and sage-bush to keep off the southerly wind. A dog is usually one of the occupants. Like the African, the Indian is cruel to his brute, starves it and kicks it for attempting to steal a mouthful: “Love me, love my dog,” however, is his motto, and he quarrels with the stranger that follows his example. The furniture was primitive. Upon a branch hung a dried antelope head used in stalking: concerning this sport Uncle Billy had a story of his nearly being shot by being mistaken for the real animal; and tripods of timber supporting cloths and moccasins, pans, camp-kettles, stones for grinding grass-seed, and a variety of baskets. The material was mostly willow twig, with a layer of gum, probably from the pine-tree. Some were water-tight like the “Hán” of Somaliland; others, formed like the Roman amphora, were for storing grain; while others, in giant cocked-hat shape, were intended for sweeping in crickets and the grass-seeds upon which these Indians feed. The chief gramineæ are the atriplex and chenopodaceous plants. After inspecting the camp we retired precipitately: its condition was that of an Egyptian army’s last nighting-place.
[PRICE OF A GOVERNMENT FARM.]
About two miles from the station there is a lake covered with water-fowl, from the wild swan to the rail. I preferred, however, to correct my Shoshonee vocabulary under the inspection of Mose Wright, an express rider from a neighboring station. None of your “one-horse” interpreters, he had learned the difficult dialect in his youth, and he had acquired all the intonation of an Indian. Educated beyond the reach of civilization, he was in these days an oddity; he was convicted of having mistaken a billiard cue for a whip handle, and was accused of having mounted the post supporting the electric telegraph wire in order to hear what it was saying. The evening was spent in listening to Uncle Billy’s adventures among the whites and reds. He spoke highly of his protégés, especially of their affection and fidelity in married life: they certainly appeared to look upon him as a father. He owed something to legerdemain; here, as in Algeria, a Houdin or a Love would be great medicine-men with whom nobody would dare to meddle. Uncle Billy managed to make the post pay by peltries of the mink, wolf, woodchuck or ground-hog, fox, badger, antelope, black-tailed deer, and others. He illustrated the peculiarities of the federal government by a curious anecdote. The indirect or federal duties are in round numbers $100,000,000, of which $60,000,000 are spent, leaving a surplus of forty for the purpose of general corruption: the system seems to date from the days of the “ultimus Romanorum,” President Jackson. None but the largest claimants can expect to be recognized. A few years ago one of the Indian agents in ---- was asked by a high official what might be about the cost of purchasing a few hundred acres for a government farm. After reckoning up the amount of beads, wire, blankets, and gunpowder, the total was found to be $240. The high official requested his friend to place the statement on paper, and was somewhat surprised the next morning to see the $240 swollen to $40,000. The reason given was characteristic: “What great government would condescend to pay out of £8,000,000 a paltry £48, or would refuse to give £8000?”