Part 5

The history of the Mormons has ever since been the unbroken record of the most wonderful prosperity. It has looked, as though the elements of fortune, obedient to a law of natural re-action, were struggling to compensate to them their undue share of suffering. They may be pardoned for deeming it miraculous. But, in truth, the economist accounts for it all, who explains to us the speedy recuperation of cities, laid in ruin by flood, fire and earthquake. During its years of trial, Mormon labor has subsisted on insufficient capital, and under many trials--but it has subsisted, and survives them now, as intelligent and powerful as ever it was at Nauvoo; with this difference, that it has in the meantime been educated to habits of unmatched thrift, energy and endurance, and has been transplanted to a situation where it is in every respect more productive. Moreover, during all the period of their journey, while some have gained by practice in handicraft, and the experience of repeated essays at their various halting-places, the minds of all have been busy framing designs and planning the improvements they have since found opportunity to execute.

The territory of the Mormons is unequalled as a stock-raising country. The finest pastures of Lombardy are not more estimable than those on the east side of the Utah Lake and Jordan River. We find here that cereal anomaly, the Bunch grass. In May, when the other grasses push, this fine plant dries upon its stalk, and becomes a light yellow straw, full of flavor and nourishment. It continues thus, through what are the dry months of the climate, till January, and then starts with a vigorous growth, like that of our own winter wheat in April, which keeps on till the return of another May. Whether as straw or grass, the cattle fatten on it the year round. The numerous little dells and sheltered spots that are found in the mountains, are excellent sheep-walks; it is said that the wool which is grown upon them is of an unusually fine pile and soft texture. Hogs fatten on a succulent bulb or tuber, called the Seacoe, or Seegose Root, which I hope will soon be naturalized with us. It is highly esteemed as a table vegetable by Mormons and Indians, and I remark that they are cultivating it with interest at the French Garden of Plants. The emigrant poultry have taken the best of care of each other, only needing liberty to provide themselves with every other blessing.

The Mormons have also been singularly happy in their Indian relations. They have not made the common mistake of supposing savages insensible to courtesy of demeanor; but, being taught by their religion to regard them all as decayed brethren, have always treated the silly wicked souls with kind-hearted civility. Though their outlay for tobacco, wampum and vermillion has been of the very smallest, yet they have never failed to purchase what goodwill they have wanted.

Hence, it happens, that in their Land of Promise, they are on the best of terms with all the Canaanites and Hittites, and Hivites, and Amorites, and Girgashites, and Perizzites, and Jebusites, within its borders; while they "maintain their cherished relations of amity with the rest of mankind," who, in their case, include a sort of latest remnant of the primaeval primates, called the Root Diggers. The Diggers, who in stature, strength and general personal appearance, may be likened to a society of old negro women, are only to be dreaded for their exceeding ugliness. The tribes that rob and murder in war, and otherwise live more like white men, are however numerous all around them.

Fortunately, upon their marauding expeditions, and in matters that affect their freebooting relations generally, they all obey the great war chief of the tribe called the Utahs, in the heart of whose proper territory the Mormon settlements are comprehended.

If accounts are true, the Utahs are brave fellows. They differ obviously from the deceased nations, to whose estates we have taken it upon ourselves to administer. They ride strong, well-limbed Spanish horses, not ponies; bear well cut rifles, not shot-guns, across their saddle-bows, and are not without some idea of military discipline. They carry their forays far into the Mexican States, laying the inhabitants under contribution, and taking captive persons of condition, whom they hold to ransom. They are, as yet at least, little given to drink; some of them manifest considerable desire to acquire useful knowledge; and they are attached to their own infidel notions of religion, making long journeys to the ancient cities of the Colorado, to worship among the ruined temples there. The Soldan of these red Paynims, too, their great war chief, is not without his knightly graces. According to some of the Mormons, he is the paragon of Indians. His name, translated to diminish its excellence as an exercise in Prosody, is Walker. He is a fine figure of a man, in the prime of life. He excels in various manly exercises, is a crack shot, a rough rider, and a great judge of horse flesh.

He is besides very clever, in our sense of the word. He is a peculiarly eloquent master of the graceful alphabet of pantomime, which stranger tribes employ to communicate with one another. He has picked up some English, and is familiar with Spanish and several Indian tongues. He rather affects the fine gentleman. When it is his pleasure to extend his riding excursions into Mexico, to inflict or threaten outrage, or to receive the instalments of his black mail salary, he will take offence if the poor people there fail to kill their fattest beeves, and adopt other measures to show him obsequious and distinguished attention. He has more than one black-eyed mistress there, according to his own account, to whom he makes love in her own language. His dress is a full suit of the richest broadcloth, generally brown, cut in European fashion, with a shining beaver hat, and fine cambric shirt. To these, he adds his own gaudy Indian trimmings, and in this way contrives, they say, to look superbly, when he rides at the head of his troop, whose richly caparisoned horses, with their embroidered saddles and harness, shine and tinkle as they prance under their weight of gay metal ornaments.

With all his wild cat fierceness, Walker is perfectly velvet-pawed to the Mormons. There is a queer story about his being influenced in their favor, by a dream. It is the fact, that from the first, he has received the Mormon exiles into his kingdom, with a generosity, that in its limited sphere, transcends that of the Grand Monarch to the English Jacobites. He rejoices to give them the information they want about the character of the country under his rule, advises with them as to the advantages of particular localities, and wherever they choose to make their settlements, guarantees them personal safety and immunity from depredation.

From the first, therefore, the Mormons have had little or nothing to do in Deseret, but attend to their mechanical and strictly agricultural pursuits. They have made several successful settlements; the farthest North, at what they term Brownsville, is about forty miles, and the farthest South, in a valley called the Sanpeech, 200 miles, from that first formed. A duplicate of the Lake Tiberias, or Genesareth, empties its waters into the innocent Dead Sea of Deseret, by a fine river, to which the Mormons have given the name--it was impossible to give it any other--of the Western Jordan.

It was on the right bank of this stream, at a choice spot upon a rich table land traversed by a great company of exhaustless streams falling from the highlands, that the Pioneer band of Mormons, coming out of the mountains in the night, pitched their first camp in the Valley, and consecrated the ground. Curiously enough, this very spot proved the most favorable site for their chief settlement, and after exploring the whole country, they have founded on it their city of the New Hierusalem. Its houses are spread to command as much as possible the farms, which are laid out in Wards or Cantons, with a common fence to each Ward. The farms in wheat already cover a space, greater than the District of Columbia, over all of which they have completed the canals, and other arrangements for bountiful irrigation, after the manner of the cultivators of the East. The houses are distributed over an area nearly as great as the City of New York.

They have little thought as yet of luxury in their public buildings. But they will soon have nearly completed a large common public store-house and granary, and a great sized public bath-house. One of the many wonderful thermal springs of the valley, a white sulphur water of the temperature of 102 Fahrenheit, with a head "the thickness of a man's body," they have already brought into the town for this purpose; and all have learned the habit of indulging in it. They have besides a yellow brick meeting-house, 100 feet by 60, in which they gather on Sundays and in the week-day evenings. But this is only a temporary structure. They have reserved a summit level in the heart of the city, for the site of a Temple far superior to that of Nauvoo, which, in the days of their future wealth and power, is to be the landmark of the Basin and goal of future pilgrims.

They mean to seek no other resting-place. After pitching camps enough to exhaust many times over the chapter of names in 33d Numbers, they have at last come to their Promised Land, and, "behold, it is a good land and large, and flowing with milk and honey:" and here again for them, as at Nauvoo, the forge smokes and the anvil rings, and whirring wheels go round; again has returned the merry sport of childhood, and the evening quiet of old age, and again dear house-pet flowers bloom in garden plots round happy homes.

It is to these homes, in the heart of our American Alps, like the holy people of the Grand Saint Bernard, they hold out their welcome to the passing traveller. Some of you have probably seen in the St. Louis papers, the repeated votes of thanks to them of companies of emigrants to California. These are often reduced to great straights after passing Fort Laramie, and turn aside to seek the Salt Lake Colony in pitiable plights of fatigue and destitution. The road, after leaving the Oregon trace, is one of increasing difficulty, and when the last mountain has been crossed, passes along the bottom of a deep Canyon, whose scenery is of an almost terrific gloom. It is a defile that I trust no Mormon Martin Hofer of this Western Tyrol will be called to consecrate to liberty with blood. At every turn the overhanging cliffs threaten to break down upon the little torrent river that has worn its way at their base. Indeed, the narrow ravine is so serrated by this stream, that the road crosses it from one side to the other, something like forty times in the last five miles. At the end of the ravine, the emigrant comes abruptly out of the dark pass into the lighted valley on an even bench or terrace of its upper table land. No wonder if he loses his self-control here. A ravishing panoramic landscape opens out below him, blue, and green, and gold, and pearl; a great sea with hilly islands, rivers, a lake, and broad sheets of grassy plain, all set, as in a silver chased cup, within mountains whose peaks of perpetual snow are burnished by a dazzling sun. It is less these, however, than the foreground of old-country farms, with their stacks and thatchings and stock, and the central city, smoking from its chimneys and swarming with working inhabitants, that tries the men of fatigue broken nerves. The 'Californeys' scream, they sing, they give three cheers, and do not count them, a few have prayed; more swear, some fall on their faces and cry outright. News arrived a few days since from a poor townsman of ours, a journeyman saddler, that used to work up Market street beyond Broad, by name Gillian, who sought the valley, his cattle given out, and himself broken down and half heart-broken:--The recluse Mormons fed and housed him and his party, and he made his way through to the gold diggings with restored health and strength. To Gillian's credit for manhood, should perhaps be cited his own allegation, that he first whistled through his fingers various popular nocturnal, street, circus, and theatre calls; but it is certain that, when my tidings speak of him, which was when he was afterwards hospitably entreated by a Mormon, whom he knew ten years ago as one of our Chester County farmers, he was completely dissolved into something not far from the hysterics, and wept on till the tears ran down his dusty beard.

Several hundred emigrants, in more or less distress, received gratuitous assistance last year from the Mormons.

Their community must go on thriving. They are to be the chief workers and contractors upon "Whitney's Railroad," or whatever scheme is to unite the Atlantic and Pacific by way of the South Pass; and their valley must be its central station. They have already raised a "Perpetual Fund" for "the final fulfilment of the covenant made by the Saints in the Temple at Nauvoo," which "is not to cease till all the poor are brought to the valley." All the poor still lingering behind, will be brought there: so at an early period will the fifty thousand communicants, the Church already numbers in Great Britain, with all the other "increase among the Gentiles." Their place of rendezvous will be upon what were formerly the Pottawatamie lands. The interests of this Stake have been admirably cared for. It now comprises the thriving counties of "Fremont" and "Pottawatamie," in which the Mormons still number a majority of the inhabitants. Their chief town is growing rapidly, already boasting over three thousand inhabitants, with nineteen large merchants' stores, the mail lines and five regular steam packets running to it, and other western evidences of prosperity; besides a fine Music Hall and public buildings, and the printing establishment of a very ably edited newspaper, "The Frontier Guardian."

It is probably the best station on the Missouri for commencing the overland journey to Oregon and California; as travellers can follow directly from it the Mormon road, which, in addition to other advantages, proves to be more salubrious than those to the south of it. Large numbers are expected to arrive at this point from England during the present spring, on their way to the Salt Lake. They will repay their welcome; for every working person gained to the hive of their "Honey State" counts as added wealth. So far, the Mormons write in congratulation, that they have not among them "a single loafer rich or poor, idle gentleman or lazy vagabond." They are no Communists; but their experience has taught them the gain of joint stock to capital, and combination to labor,--perhaps something more, for I remark they have recently made arrangements to "classify their mechanics," which is probably a step in the right direction. They will be successful manufacturers, for their vigorous land-locked industry cannot be tampered with by protection. They have no gold--they have not hunted for it; but they have found wealth of other valuable minerals; rock salt enough to do the curing of the world,--"We'll salt the Union for you," they write, "if you can't preserve it in any other way,"--perhaps coal, excellent ores of iron everywhere. They are near enough, however, to the Californian Sierra, to be the chief quartermasters of its miners; and they will dig their own gold in their unlimited fields of admirably fertile land. I should only invite your incredulity, and the disgust of the Horticultural Society, by giving you certain measurements of mammoth beets, turnips, pumpkins, and garden vegetables, in my possession. In that country where stock thrives care free, where a poor man's 32 potatoes saved can return him 18 bushels, and 2 1/2 bushels of wheat sown yield 350 bushels in a season; or where an average crop of wheat on irrigated lands is 50 bushels to the acre; the farmer's part is hardly to be despised. Certainly it will not be under a continuance of the present prices current of the region,--wheat at $4 the bushel, and flour $12 the hundred, with a ready market.

The recent letters from Deseret interest me in one thing more. They are eloquent in describing the anniversary of the Pioneers' arrival in the Valley. It was the 24th of July, and they have ordained that that day shall be commemorated in future, like our 21st of December, as their Forefather's Day. The noble Walker attended as an invited guest, with two hundred of his best dressed mounted cavaliers, who stacked their guns and took up their places at the ceremonies and banquet, with the quiet precision of soldiers marched to mass. The Great Band was there too, that had helped their humble hymns through all the wanderings of the Wilderness. Through the many trying marches of 1846, through the fierce winter ordeal that followed, and the long journey after over plain and mountain, it had gone unbroken, without the loss of any of its members. As they set out from England, and as they set out from Illinois, so they all came into the valley together, and together sounded the first glad notes of triumph when the Salt Lake City was founded. It was their right to lead the psalm of praise. Anthem, song and dance, all the innocent and thankful frolic of the day owed them its chief zest. "They never were in finer key." The people felt their sorrows ended. FAR WEST, their old settlement in Missouri, and NAUVOO; with their wealth and ease, like "Pithom and Ramses, treasure cities built for Pharaoh," went awhile forgotten. Less than four years had restored them every comfort that they needed. Their entertainment, the contribution of all, I have no doubt was really sumptuous. It was spread on broad buffet tables about 1400 feet in length, at which they took their seats by turns, while they kept them heaped with ornamented delicacies. "Butter of kine, and milk, with fat of lambs, with the fat of kidneys of wheat;" "and the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic, and the remembered fish which we did eat in Egypt freely"--they seem unable to dilate with too much pride upon the show it made.

"To behold the tables," says one, that I quote from literally:

"To behold them filling the Bowery and all adjoining grounds, loaded with all luxuries of the fields and gardens and nearly all the varieties that any vegetable market in the world could produce, and to see the seats around those tables filled and refilled by a people who had been deprived of those luxuries for years by the cruel hand of oppression, and freely offering seats to every stranger within their borders; and this, too, in the Valley of the Mountains, over a thousand miles from civilization, where, two years before, naught was to be found save the wild root of the prairie and the mountain cricket; was a theme of unbounded thanksgiving and praise to the Giver of all Good, as the dawning of a day when the Children of the Kingdom can sit under their own vines and fig-trees, and inhabit their own houses, having none to make them afraid. May the time be hastened when the scattered Israel may partake of such like banquets from the gardens of Joseph!" [G]

I have gone over the work I assigned myself when I accepted your Committee's invitation, as fully as I could do without trespassing too largely upon your courteous patience. But I should do wrong to conclude my lecture without declaring in succinct and definite terms, the opinions I have formed and entertain of the Mormon people. The libels, of which they have been made the subject, make this a simple act of justice. Perhaps, too, my opinion, even with those who know me as you do, will better answer its end following after the narrative I have given.

I have spoken to you of a people; whose industry had made them rich, and gathered around them all the comforts, and not a few of the luxuries of refined life; expelled by lawless force into the Wilderness; seeking an untried home far away from the scenes which their previous life had endeared to them; moving onward, destitute, hunger-sickened, and sinking with disease; bearing along with them their wives and children, the aged, and the poor, and the decrepit; renewing daily on their march, the offices of devotion, the ties of family and friendship, and charity; sharing necessities, and braving dangers together, cheerful in the midst of want and trial, and persevering until they triumphed. I have told, or tried to tell you, of men, who when menaced by famine, and in the midst of pestilence, with every energy taxed by the urgency of the hour, were building roads and bridges, laying out villages, and planting cornfields, for the stranger who might come after them, their kinsman only by a common humanity, and peradventure a common suffering,--of men, who have renewed their prosperity in the homes they have founded in the desert,--and who, in their new built city, walled round by mountains like a fortress, are extending pious hospitalities to the destitute emigrants from our frontier lines,--of men who, far removed from the restraints of law, obeyed it from choice, or found in the recesses of their religion, something not inconsistent with human laws, but far more controlling; and who are now soliciting from the government of the United States, not indemnity,--for the appeal would be hopeless, and they know it--not protection, for they now have no need of it,--but that identity of political institutions and that community of laws with the rest of us, which was confessedly their birthright when they were driven beyond our borders.

I said I would give you the opinion I formed of the Mormons: you may deduce it for yourselves from these facts. But I will add that I have not yet heard the single charge against them as a Community, against their habitual purity of life, their integrity of dealing, their toleration of religious differences in opinion, their regard for the laws, or their devotion to the constitutional government under which we live, that I do not from my own observation, or the testimony of others, know to be unfounded.

THE END.

POSTSCRIPT TO THE SECOND EDITION.

I have been annoyed by comments this hastily written discourse has elicited. Well meaning friends have even invited me to tone down its remarks in favor of the Mormons, for the purpose of securing them a readier acceptance.--I can only make them more express. The Truth must take care of itself. I not only meant to deny that the Mormons in any wise fall below our own standard of morals, but I would be distinctly understood to ascribe to those of their number with whom I associated in the West, a general correctness of deportment, and purity of character above the average of ordinary communities.

The furthest I can go toward qualifying my testimony, will be to name the causes, to which, as a believer in Nature's compensations, I have myself credited this undue morality.

It was partly attributable perhaps to their forced abstemiousness; the diet of the most fortunate Mormons having been for long continued periods very spare, and composed almost wholly of vegetable food, with few condiments, and no intoxicating liquors. Some influence should be referred also to their custom of early and equal marriages, these not being regulated by the prudential considerations which embarrass opulent communities; something more to the supervision which was incidental to their nomadic life, and the habits it encouraged of disciplined, but grateful industry.