Utah and the Mormons/Chapter 19

The Mormons have had great success in making converts by the boldness of their pretensions, and the hardihood of their manner of recommending them. Doctor Cox, in his "Interviews," gives us a very characteristic instance of an attempt to convert him on the part of two of Joseph's missionaries. They called one Sabbath morning, and in a very solemn and imposing manner addressed him as "Brother Cox, a man of God, a friend of truth, a lover of righteousness, and a preacher of the Gospel," and announced that they had been sent on a special mission to him; and that he was to become a Latter-day Saint, and rise to great eminence in the new Zion. The doctor called for some miraculous demonstration by way of credential, which they declined exhibiting just then, although they claimed the power to do so. The Saints possess great cunning in adapting themselves to the peculiar temperaments and idiosyncracies of individuals; but in this instance they mistook their man. The interview ran into a dialogue, which warmed into animation, of which the following—No. 1 representing the Doctor, and 2 and 3 his visitors—will give the reader some idea:

1. "I shall not stir another step in this business till ​I see the evidence on which you rely, as self-vaunted envoys extraordinary and ministers plenipotentiary from the court of the King of kings, to sustain your apostolicity and vindicate your claims. Here, then, I take my stand, and call for evidence—for proof. How am I to know, gentlemen, that you are not impostors?"

3. "You had better take care, sir, what you say. The evidence may come sooner than you desire, and as you do not expect, and what you will not relish, sure enough! I would just warn you to beware!"

1. "You mean that the evidence may surprise me, coming in the way and style of some divine judgment?"

3. "Yes, sir, I do; and I hereby warn you against it."

2. "Oh! if it should come now, what would become—"

1. "Very well, gentlemen, I am ready, and quite content. Send a good rousing judgment along—a little touch of earthquake, some thunder and lightning, cholera morbus, palsy, volcano, avalanche, nightmare, gout, ship fever, neuralgia, or any thing else you please; yes, little or much of it, gentlemen, and the sooner the better, as I am ready, if you are, and quite disposed to be accommodating."

3. "Sir, are you forgetting yourself all the time?"

1. "Not at all; I am only remembering you. Let us have some of the evidence. Come! your testimonials, your seals, your signs, gentlemen."

2. "Why, I never saw or heard such a man as you!"

1. "Nor I ever read or conceived before of such men or such apostles, exactly, as are you."

2. "I fear you are a hardened old—"

​3. "Yes, and blinded, too, with darkness."

1. "Why, surely there seems to be considerable darkness in my study—more than common this afternoon—and I wish there were more air, since light seems so scarce, and heat so oppressive in it."

3. "Sir, to tell you plainly, you are a hardened man and a hypocrite—given up—reprobate."

2. "Oh, how dark—dark—dark you are!"

3. "Yes, you are a hypocrite, a liar, sir; and I know—"

1. "Stay just a moment. Pray, be quite calm. I can refute all that instantly on the authority of two apostles. Instead of liar, hypocrite, reprobate, I am, you remember, 'Brother Cox, a man of God, a friend of truth, a lover of righteousness, and a preacher of the Gospel.' This is a great honor—quite a high and a memorable endorsement. It is, at least, the exalted character I had a few hours since. If I have it not yet, but have grown so bad all at once, as you now denounce me, it must be because I have been some time in your company."

The affair ended in a very unequivocal hint for the intruders to quit the premises, which they did, muttering all sorts of maledictions. But where one experiment like that of Doctor Cox failed, hundreds of others succeeded, until the increasing numbers of their community became an inducement to join it, irrespective of any religious convictions.

The facility with which they have made converts in Great Britain has created surprise, but it is very easily accounted for. In the first place, with all her light and knowledge, there is in our mother country a lament​able mass of ignorance. Mr. Dickens, in his Household Words, says on this subject: "It has been calculated that there are in England and Wales six million persons who can neither read nor write; that is to say, about one third of the population, including, of course, infants; but, of all the children between five and fourteen, more than one half attend no place of public instruction. These statements, compiled by M'Kay from official and other authentic sources, for his work on the social condition and education of the poor in England and Europe, would be hard to believe, if we had not to encounter, in our every-day life, degrees of illiteracy which would be startling if we were not thoroughly used to it. We can not pass through the streets, we can not enter a place of public assembly, or ramble in the fields, without the gloomy shadow of ignorance sweeping over us."

In the next place, thousands, who have no fixed religious faith, are discontented with their condition, and anxious to emigrate to this country, and very willingly take advantage of the opportunity of having their expenses paid by the "Emigrating Fund Company." Deseret is described to them as a perfect paradise; and that which makes this Eden doubly attractive is, that each one can have as much as he needs without paying a cent for it. The more pretending and ambitious class of these converts are greatly elated, too, with the idea of becoming priests, bishops, &c., which, in England, are stations of importance. These foreign emigrants, after they get to Utah, make the most obedient subjects, because they are accustomed to tithing, and other features of an ecclesiastical dominion; they glide ​easily into all the wild and absurd notions of Mormonism, and are more easily kept in debt to the "Public Works," and consequently in entire dependence upon the Church. As poor as they live in Utah, they still fare better than formerly, and are contented in this respect. This is the general rule, which has its numerous exceptions. A sail-maker and boat-builder, both Englishmen, left in discontent for California in the spring of 1853, because it had been represented to them that the commerce of Great Salt Lake was so extensive as to furnish them continual employment, which they found to be a sheer falsehood.

The Mormon rulers take great pains to have it believed that their community is continually and rapidly increasing. This, however, is a very great mistake. There has always been a curious state of accumulation and loss going on with them, and the loss is at present probably the largest part of the account. There is no society in the world in which there are so few permanent members, in proportion to the converts originally made. Many of the new-born Saints very soon lose the soda-water enthusiasm which is first experienced, and fall away; many, who have zeal enough to commence the mighty pilgrimage toward the modern Zion, cool off, and lodge like drift-wood by the way. Each emigrating body tapers off, something like the army of Peter the Hermit in the first great crusade. Orson Pratt, in "The Seer," states the number of excommunications in the British Islands at 1776 for the half year ending June 30, 1853. They have, in reality, more backsliders and apostates, and are divided into more sects, for the length of time since their com​mencement, than any other known religious denomination. Any one who has ever seen a miniature whirlwind upon a dusty plain, and attentively watched its gyrations, catching up the dust, straws, leaves, and other loose materials, and gradually increasing in bulk and altitude until it is composed of a whirling and somewhat dangerous column of heterogeneous matter, throwing off and gathering up, until it somewhat suddenly subsides, can gain some idea of the association and operation of those peculiar elements which originated and have sustained Mormonism; and it needs no great degree of prophet-sagacity to foresee its subsidence in like manner.

This disposition to fall away does not end at Great Salt Lake Valley. Hundreds, after they arrive at that hitherto esteemed goal of all their wishes, find themselves bitterly disappointed in the anticipations and hopes previously formed, and seek every opportunity to make their way to California. The leaders are very anxious to gain sufficient population to raise the Territory to the rank of a state; and on this, as well as other grounds, throw every obstacle in the way of those who are disposed to leave them. California has acquired, in their dialect, the delightful sobriquet of Hell, and the pulpit and the press thunder forth their anathemas against all Saints who are turning their faces in that direction. At the near approach of every spring, which is more especially the season of emigration to the great Western El Dorado, the most untiring efforts are made to prevent their numbers from diminishing. In addition to direct and indirect obstacles thrown in the way of individuals, an appeal is gen​erally made to the Saints collectively by the "Council," of which the following, from the one published in the Deseret News of February 19, 1853, will exhibit the anxiety felt lest the Mormon ship should be deserted by her crew.

"'Yes! I think I shall go south, probably to the Ranche. As I am counseled to go south, I have concluded, perhaps, that this will be the best for me.'

"This is the story of many, as it is frequently told, and comes to my ears; and it is upon this point that I wish to speak.

"Do I counsel the brethren to go to California, south or north? Not unless they want to go. If there is any man, woman, or child, who desires to go to that country, in preference to casting his or their lot among the Saints—who feels so little interest in the cause of truth as to be willing, after being delivered from the Great Babylon, to again encounter the whirlpools of sin and wickedness for the sake of gold—who prefers to dwell in the tents of wickedness than to tarry among the Saints—to any and all such persons, I say, go; for Heaven's sake, for our sake, and for the sake of the gold which you desire before all other gods, go! But to all others—to all such as have embraced the Gospel" for the love which they bear toward it—who love right-cousness and truth, and who desire the peace of Jerusalem and the prosperity of Zion, stay! hold! consider what you are doing, and remember that here, in these valleys, are the chambers of the Lord for his people for a season.

​"Let no influence tempt you away, or seduce you from the path of duty. As you value your religion, which you have become the participants of through the channel of the holy and eternal priesthood of the Almighty, which in these last days he has seen fit to bestow upon mankind—as you value the excellence and the glory of the institutions of the people of God—as you value your own salvation and exaltation, and that of your kindred according to the flesh, as well as the redemption of your dead, listen to the counselings of the servants of God, and abide among his saints, until you are sent away to the nations which lieth in darkness. Until you shall be chosen as heralds of salvation, to go forth with majesty and power of the eternal priesthood, remain, and assist in preparing for the great and mighty gathering of the Saints—assist in the construction of a holy temple, which is to be built in the tops of the mountains to the name of the mighty God of Jacob, in which you can learn those ordinances necessary for the salvation of your dead, and can obtain your endowment, and the blessings which shall secure your exaltation in the kingdom of our God, even to a place among the gods of eternity."

A stranger going among them will be told over and over again that they are the most harmonious and united people ever gathered into a community. The contrary is the fact. Internal dissensions and schisms have existed among them all the way through. The immortal Joseph himself was often driven to his very wit's end to prevent fragments from flying off in a tangent and making themselves independent of the main body. After the death of Smith, there was much strife ​for the succession, and the election of Brigham Young occasioned a great deal of heart-burning with the disappointed candidates. At the breaking up at Nauvoo, a considerable number split off, under the leadership of one Strang, and are now Strangites, on Beaver Island, in one of our northern lakes. Another body went into Texas under Lyman Wight. Brewster led off another squad somewhere else. The divisions in this way are said to number six or seven. Brigham managed to slide more easily into the superstition and idiosyncracies of the Saints, and led the mass to Great Salt Lake; but he, too, has his troubles from this source, and is now more especially plagued with Gladdenism, so called from Gladden Bishop, who profanely claims to be as much superior to Joseph Smith as our Lord was to John the Baptist. This Gladden gave Joseph much trouble; was cut off from the Church, and taken back, and rebaptized nine times; but, proving obstinate in heresy, was finally given over to the buffetings of Satan for a thousand years.

This sect is small, but spreading in the very seat of Mormon power, and is the more dangerous and troublesome because composed of the more fanatical of the Saints. Fanaticism is generally honest, but always dangerous, because no one can foresee in what direction its burning focus may be turned. I met with, and became acquainted with, some of these fanatics, and have no reason to doubt their honesty in the belief that Gladden Bishop is the Lord in his second coming. One of them told me, with every appearance of sincerity, that an angel was present at his birth, and that the name Gladden was never before given to a human ​being, and signified that he would make glad the hearts of his people. It may well be suspected that Joseph intended to take this important step himself, and expand from the germ of a prophet into the full bloom of a god. In his last sermon he said, "I can enter into the mysteries; I can enter largely into the eternal worlds." He could have proved his way clear from the Bible and the Book of Mormon just as easily as the Mormons prove any thing, and all the dupes and most of the knaves would have followed him. But Gladden anticipated him, and death cut short his aspirations for divine honors.

A man by the name of Smith—which, like that of the king, is "a tower of strength"—was busy making converts in the winter of 1852–3, with such success that Brigham and his nobility became seriously alarmed. Instead, however, of treating the subject with ridicule, they resorted to the very doubtful expedient of persecution.

Smith, the Gladdenite, repudiates polygamy, and charges the present hierarchy with a departure from the Book of Mormon in this, as well as in other particulars. He has great tenacity of purpose, and is, withal, stimulated by hostility toward the leaders, on account of having been stripped by them of his property. On Sunday, the 20th of March, 1853, he attempted to preach in the street in front of the Council House, in pursuance of a previous notice, but the meeting, though perfectly orderly, was dispersed by the city marshal. Nothing daunted, he made another appointment for the same place on the following Sabbath; but the marshal again appeared, took Smith into ​custody, and detained him until he promised to make no further attempt to preach on that day. On the same day, Brigham preached in the Tabernacle, and opened his batteries upon the heretics with grape and canister. The following are some of the choice specimens of pulpit eloquence produced by the inspiration of the occasion:

"When a man comes right out as an independent devil, and says, 'Damn Mormonism and all the Mormons,' and is off with himself, not to Texas, but to California (you know it used to be to Texas), I say he is a gentleman by the side of a nasty, sneaking apostate, who is opposed to nothing but Christianity; I say to him, Go in peace, sir; go, and prosper, if you can. But we have got a set of spirits here worse than such a character. When I went from meeting last Sabbath, my ears were saluted with an apostate crying in the streets here. We want such men to go to California, or any where they choose. I say to those persons, You must not court persecution here, lest you get so much of it you will not know what to do with it. Do NOT court persecution. We have known Gladden Bishop for more than twenty years, and know him to be a poor, dirty curse. Here is Sister Vilate Kimball, Brother Heber's wife, has borne more from that man than any other woman on earth could bear; but she won't bear it again. I say again, You Gladdenites, do not court persecution, or you will get more than you want, and it will come quicker than you want it. I say to you bishops, Do not allow them to preach in your wards. Who broke the roads to these valleys? did this little nasty Smith and his wife? No; they ​stayed in St. Louis while we did it, peddling ribbons and kissing the Gentiles. I know what they have done here; they have asked exorbitant prices for their nasty, stinking ribbons [voices, 'That's true']. We broke the roads to this country. Now, you Gladdenites, keep your tongues still, lest sudden destruction come upon you.

"I will tell you a dream that I had last night. I dreamed that I was in the midst of a people who were dressed in rags and tatters; they had turbans upon their heads, and these were also hanging in tatters. The rags were of many colors, and, when the people moved, they were all in motion. Their object in this appeared to be to attract attention. Said they to me, 'We are Mormons, Brother Brigham.' 'No, you are not,' I replied. 'But we have been,' said they, and began to jump, and caper about, and dance, and their rags of many colors were all in motion to attract the attention of the people. I said, 'You are no Saints; you are a disgrace to them.' Said they, 'We have been Mormons.' By-and-by along came some mobocrats, and they greeted them with 'How do you do, sir? I am happy to see you.' They kept on that way for an hour. I felt ashamed of them, for they were, in my eyes, a disgrace to Mormonism. Then I saw two ruffians, whom I knew to be mobbers and murderers, and they crept into a bed where one of my wives and children were. I said, 'You that call yourselves brethren, tell me, is this the fashion among you?' They said, 'O, they are good men—they are gentlemen.' With that, I took my large bowie knife, that I used to wear as a bosom-pin in Nauvoo, and cut one of their throats ​from ear to ear, saying, 'Go to hell across lots.' The other one said, 'You dare not serve me so.' I instantly sprang at him, seized him by the hair of the head, and, bringing him down, cut his throat and sent him after his comrade; then told them both, if they would behave themselves, they should yet live, but if they did not, I would unjoint their necks. At this I awoke.

"I say, rather than that apostates shall flourish here, I will unsheath my bowie knife, and conquer or die. (Great commotion in the congregation, and a simultaneous burst of feeling assenting to the declaration.) Now, you nasty apostates, clear out, or judgment will be put to the line, and righteousness to the plummet. (Voices generally, 'Go it, go it.') If you say it is right, raise your hands. (All hands up.) Let us call upon the Lord to assist us in this and every good work."

No better evidence of the success of the new sect need be produced. His excellency would never have made so sublime a display of courage involving the dreadful alternative of "victory or death," nor been disturbed in his very dreams at the invasion of the sanctity of his harem, had he not been strongly excited in regard to the spread of Gladdenism. This discourse, so characteristic of its author, was rapturously received, and was as well adapted to the taste and scope of the Mormon mind as any the Saints ever hear.

Brigham was succeeded by Parley P. Pratt, who has more decency of language, as well as more subtlety of genius, combined with much complacency of manner; but even he was on this occasion aroused up to a fighting condition. After showing that all the persecutions ​ever suffered by the Latter-day innocents proceeded directly or indirectly from apostates, he said:

"Sooner than be subjected to a repetition of these wrongs, I, for one, would rather march out to-day and be shot down. These are my feelings, and have been for some time. Talk about liberty of conscience! Have not men liberty of conscience here? Yes; the Presbyterians, Methodists, Quakers, &c., have here the liberty to worship God in their own way, and so has every man in the world. People have the privilege of apostatizing from this Church, and of worshiping devils, snakes, toads, or geese, if they please—only let their neighbors alone. But they have not the privilege to disturb the peace, or to endanger life or liberty; that is the idea. If they will take that privilege, I need not repeat their doom; it has been told here to-day. They have been faithfully warned."

He proved, to his entire satisfaction and that of his audience, that the Mormon mind had become so full of truth, that, like Salt Lake, it could hold no more in solution, and that liberty of speech to the Gladdenites is only another name for the persecution of the Saints.

"We have truths already developed, unfulfilled by us, unacted upon. There are more truths poured out from the eternal fountain already than our minds can contain, or than we have places and preparations to carry out. And yet we are called upon to prove—what? Whether an egg that was known to be rotten fifteen years ago has really improved by reason of age!!!

"'You are going to be destroyed,' say they; 'destruction awaits this city!' Well, what if we are? ​We are as able to be destroyed as any people living. What care we whether we are destroyed or not? These old tabernacles will die of themselves, if let alone.

"It is policy not to wait till you are killed, but act on the defensive while you still live. I have said enough on this subject."

The Constitution of the United States guarantees to all liberty of speech, and the Saints claim to be much attached to that instrument, alleging even that it was given by inspiration; but somehow the Mormon spectacles are of a quality which prevents them from seeing this particular provision. Every man at Salt Lake Valley is in the full enjoyment of this liberty only so far as he preaches Mormonism as understood by "Council."

On Sunday, the 27th of March, the subject was again resumed at the Tabernacle by Elder Erastus Snow, in a sermon distinguished by its profanity and brutal ferocity. This was not reported for the Deseret News, and the substance of it can only be stated from memory. He began with the most sickening and fulsome adulation of the bashaw of forty tails who at present occupies the high and mighty position of the prophet of the Lord in "these last days;" after which, by way of lashing himself into a fury, he poured forth a torrent of invective against the Gentiles. He then took up the Gladdenites, and hoped the Lord would curse and destroy them. He plainly told the audience that whoever should be the executioners of divine justice in this case, and slay the Gladdenites, their wives and children, from the face of the earth, would receive a bright crown of glory. The injunction to assassinate ​these sectaries was open and undisguised, and repeated in a variety of forms, and, what is more to be lamented, was approvingly responded to by the audience. It was a sphere of murder, plain, palpable, frightful, and sickening. The picture was one which, once seen, can never be effaced from the mind—a preacher in the pulpit ferociously enjoining the murder of men, women, and children, for a difference of opinion, and 2000 faces intently gazing upon him with fanatical approbation. The regions of the damned could scarcely present a scene more truly diabolical. A Gentile emigrant present stood it as long as he could, but finally left the Tabernacle with compressed lips and clenched fist, and evidently under an uncontrollable fit of indignant excitement. This is Mormonism! These are the people who have made the world ring with the persecutions of the Gentiles!

Elder Snow was succeeded by Amasa Lyman, one of the twelve, a rubicund, smooth-faced debauchee, who spends most of his time in San Bernardino, California, and has concubines at convenient stations between that and the Mormon capital. His language and manner were less violent and more dignified, but quite as significant. He reminded the members of the Church of their covenant obligations, and strongly urged that this was an occasion in which particular members were to perform the duties allotted to them; alluding evidently to the "Danites," or "Brothers of Gideon," a band of organized ruffians of which mention has already been made, whose duty it is to execute the mandates of the council, "right or wrong."

In the mean time, Smith had appointed a meeting ​at his own house for this same Sabbath, and, as the hour approached, a band of young men assembled around his door, and collected a quantity of stones ready for use; and as the Gladdenites came to attend the meeting, and entered the house, a long, six-foot, scowling Danite, by the name of Cummings, in obedience to his "covenant obligations," took them by the collar and led them out, with threats of extermination. After these demonstrations, it was generally supposed by the resident Gentiles that Smith would mysteriously disappear, as obnoxious men sometimes do in this remote region; but the leaders either concluded that such a finale, after so much parade, might attract the attention of the general government, or that their threats would awe the heretics into submission. Be this as it may, Gladdenism is feeding upon persecution and increasing its converts, and it may prove to be one of the appointed means, under Providence, of breaking the Mormon community into still smaller fragments.

Mormonism has probably passed its culminating point, and may reasonably be regarded as in the afternoon of its existence. So great are the continual drains upon them, that the present population of Utah can only be increased, or even kept up, by emigration. Prior to the summer of 1852, the existence of polygamy had been carefully concealed from the mass of the Saints residing abroad, and it was the belief of many at Salt Lake City that its promulgation would discourage further emigration.

Whatever may be the cause—whether the public announcement and justification of polygamy, or the ab​sence of Gentile persecution, or because the concern is wearing out of itself, a comparison of their numbers at different dates will show an evident decline. When Joseph was at the height of his power at Nauvoo, his disciples in different parts of the earth were supposed to number about 200,000 (including the families of actual members, confined almost wholly to Great Britain and the United States). The Mormons themselves boasted a much larger figure. In the Deseret Almanac for 1853, the numbers are stated at 150,000; but how one half of this is made up it is difficult to see. Taking 30,000 as the population of Utah, as given by the same authority, and adding thereto 28,640, the number which Orson Pratt gives for the British Isles, after taking out for deaths and excommunicated persons, and we have, in round numbers, less than 59,000, which leaves a balance of about 91,000 to be made up from the United States, Sandwich Islands, &c.; and it is not probable that one eighth of that number can be figured up, with the aid of Strangites and other schismatics.

In Great Britain, the grand total in 1851 was given at 30,747. In 1853 Orson Pratt gives it as follows:

"The Statistical Report of the Church of the Saints in the British Islands, for the half year ending June 30, 1853, gives the following total: 53 conferences, 737 branches, 40 seventies, 10 high-priests, 2578 elders, 1854 priests, 1416 teachers, 834 deacons, 1776 excommunicated, 274 dead, 1722 emigrated, 2601 baptized; total, 30,690."

Deducting excommunications, emigrants, and deaths, we have 26,918. This, if not a decided falling off, ​shows at least a stand-still in a theatre of operations heretofore remarkable for successful proselytism.

Again, the Deseret Almanac for 1853 gives "a little over 30,000" as the then population of Utah. Orson Pratt states it in his "Seer" at from "thirty to thirty-five thousand." Some of the Gentile residents supposed there might be between twenty-five and thirty thousand; my own observation fixed it at 25,000. It appears from the minutes of the October Conference (1853) that the Mormon population was 18,206. This does not include the village of Toele, in Toele county, nor Mountainville, in Utah county; but the population of both would not exceed 300, adding which would make 18,506, showing a decrease of about 5000 since the winter of 1853.

While the numbers already gathered are on the decrease, causes similar to those which have produced this result are also at work which must seriously interfere with the accession of new converts, especially from civilized countries. Polygamy has proved to be the Pandora's box from which these troublesome plagues have gone forth on their errand of mischief, and it would seem that Hope itself had been permitted to escape. Owing to dissensions which have grown out of this institution, the missionary establishment has become much less effective, and, consequently, the progress of conversion is much more tardy than formerly. When the Governor or one of his favorites casts a longing eye upon the Bathsheba of a more humble brother, who is unwilling to give her up, it gives rise to collisions, jealousies, and hate, which more or less ruffle the surface of Mormon harmony. In these cases, the hus​band is generally sent on a distant mission, that the poacher upon his grounds may be rid of his opposition. A case occurred in the fall of 1852. One Wells, the Superintendent of the Public Works, and, withal, a species of right-hand man, conceived a violent passion for the sister of one of his six wives, who happened to be married to another man. The husband was forthwith appointed on a mission to Siam; but, fully understanding the true reason of his selection for so distant a post, he refused to go. This recusancy, however, did not save his wife, who, during the ensuing winter, was transferred to the harem of the favorite.

Again, men who are disposed to be turbulent, and who may exercise an influence dangerous to the reigning prophet, are sent to distant parts of the globe, to keep them out of the way. Some, too, who have become miserable sots, and otherwise burdensome, are sent off, in the hope that they will die or reform. Two were appointed to the mission in China in the spring of 1853, one of whom was a wretched inebriate. These men went to California, on their way to their post, in the same train with us. At the sink of Mary's River, near the commencement of the forty-mile desert, was one of those troublesome liquor stations which are beginning to cluster the route, and at this place both of these messengers of mercy became beastly drunk; and one of them, being quarrelsome in his cups, got into a fight, and carried the unequivocal marks of the encounter in his face for some days.

Missionaries who are thus appointed more as a matter of policy at home than in reference to their efficiency abroad, do not carry with them the same zeal ​which distinguished the early Mormons. They have, too, a more difficult task to perform. They have not only to overcome the repugnance so strongly felt in all Christian countries to polygamy, but to explain why they have heretofore carried on a system of deception in regard to its previous existence. From these and other causes, it is not very likely that a larger number of Saints than the present population of Utah will ever be organized into a distinct community, and these, it may well be foreseen, subject to a loss which can not be repaired, must gradually sink away and become lost in a better population. The American, therefore, who is proud of his country, may reasonably hope that the Union is not destined to be disgraced by the admission of a state in which the licentious practices of Jewry and heathendom are made a part of its religious institutions.

Early in May, 1853, we bade adieu to Great Salt Lake City with a degree of pleasure which the reader, if he has had the patience to peruse the foregoing pages, will readily appreciate, and started for California, homeward bound. We joined a large cattle-train belonging to Messrs. Livingston and Kirkhead, under the charge of Captain Howard Egan, an experienced mountaineer. We traveled along the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake, and around its northern extremity; .looked into Oregon; climbed over the Goose Creek Mountains; threaded our way down the Mary's River to its sink; passed into Carson's Valley, and up its river to its sources in the great Sierra Nevada; gazed with wonder upon the sublime panorama of lofty mountain peaks and tremendous chasms to be seen from the summit of that mighty range; and, finally, descended from these snowy regions into the Italian climate of California.

When we reached the valley of the Mary, the ordinary emigrant road was found to be impassable, by reason of the river floods, and our train was conducted with great skill-for some distance along the base of the Humboldt Mountains, and from thence obliquely to the river, making a divergence of about one hundred and fifty miles. This led us over irregular highlands and through frightful gorges—a region, torn by earthquakes and scorched by volcanic fires, which had never ​before been traversed by a white man. Such a journey was of course made up of numerous incidents which can not be forgotten, and especially to be remembered may be mentioned the numberless kindnesses received from the proprietor (Mr. L.), the conductor, and every member of the train; the freely-tendered hospitalities of Colonel Reese, whose establishment in Carson's Valley reminds one of the comforts and conveniences of eastern life; and the friendly aid of Mr. Edwin Woolly, the conductor of the Mormon train, offered to, and gratefully received by, a small party of us who had impatiently separated from our friends, and were about entering the rugged defiles of the great Sierra.

But, however interesting all these incidents may be to the parties concerned, the reader, in view of the multiplicity of published travels, will readily excuse in this instance a more minute detail.