plunge between the facing cañon cliffs of the Rocky Mountains and the
Selkirks where they almost touch, the very apex of that vast interior
arid basin that stretches thence all across the United States and on
into Mexico. At Yakima, in Washington State, we had crossed the Cascade
range and found the arid valley made to bloom and blossom into a
perpetual garden by means of the melting snows that there fed the Yakima
River and adjacent streams. Now we were again descending from the crests
of the Sierra Nevadas, down into this same vast basin where no Columbia
cuts it through and no Yakima irrigates its limitless and solitary
aridness. For more than three hundred miles have we now been traversing
this expanse of parched and naked waste. No water, no life, no bird, no
beast, no man. Two thousand miles and more it stretches north and south,
from Canada into Mexico. Five hundred and forty miles is its narrowest
width. We beheld a spur of it the other evening when we crossed the edge
of the Mojave desert in Southern California; we should have traversed it
two days or more if we had taken the Southern Pacific route through
Arizona. As wide in its narrowest part as from Charleston to New York,
or to Chicago! What courage and what temerity did those early pioneers
possess who first ventured to cross it with their lumbering
prairie-schooners or on their grass-fed bronchos from the Eastern
plains! And how many there were who perished in the attempt! Yet water
will change even these blasted wastes, and, at the one or two stations
where artesian wells have been successfully sunk, we saw high-grown
trees and verdant gardens.
Late in the afternoon we began to approach high, barren hills and
mountain spurs, all brown and sere, save the sage brush. No cactus or
even yucca here, and after climbing and crossing a long, dry ridge, we
found ourselves descending into flat, sandy reaches, that bore even no
shrubs or plants whatsoever, save a dead and somber sedgy grass in
sparse, feeble bunches, and while the land looked wet we saw no water.
Then far to the southeast glimmered a silver streak, so faint that it
seemed no more than mist, and the streak grew and broadened and gleamed
until we knew it to be, in fact, Utah's Great Salt Lake. Later, we came
yet nearer to it for a few miles, and then lost sight of it again. But
the face of the land had changed. We saw cattle among the sage brush;
cattle browsing on the sweet, dry grass that grows close under the
sage-brush shadow on the better soils. Then we came to an occasional mud
dugout hut and sometimes a wooden shack, and the country grew greener,
grass--buffalo bunch grass--became triumphant over the sage brush, and
then, right in the midst of a waste of sere yellowness, was an emerald
meadow of alfalfa and a man driving two stout horses hitched to a
mowing-machine cutting it, two women raking it and tossing it. We were
in the land of Mormondom, and beheld their works. Now, the whole country
became green, irrigating ditches everywhere, substantial farmhouses,
large, well-built barns and outhouses, and miles of thrifty Lombardy
poplars, marking the roadways and the boundaries of the fields.
[Illustration: THE MORMON TEMPLE.]
At Ogden, where we were three hours late, our sleeper was taken off the
through train to Cheyenne and attached to the express for Salt Lake
City. We made no further stops, but, for an hour, whirled through a
green, fruitful, patiently-tilled landscape, whose fertility and
productiveness delighted eye and brain. Many orchards, large,
comfortable farmsteads; wide meadows, green and abundant, as in Holland,
with cattle and horses feeding upon them; stubble wheatfields, with
flocks of sheep; great beet fields and kitchen gardens in full crops;
and water--water in a thousand ditches everywhere! Big farm wagons,
drawn by large, strong horses, we saw upon the highways; and farmers, in
well-found vehicles, returning from the city to their homes.
Then, far away, towering above all else, loomed a group of gray spires,
like the distant view of the dominating pinnacles of the minsters and
cathedrals of England and of France, and of Cologne. They were the
spires of the great towers of the Mormon temple, that strange, imposing
and splendid creation of the brain of Brigham Young.
It was dusk when we reached the city. Electric lights were twinkling
along the wide streets as we drove to our hotel. We have not yet seen
the city, except for a short stroll under the glaring lights. But
already it has made an indelible impression on our minds. Only two
cities upon this continent--cities of magnitude--have ever been created
and laid out, by systematic forethought, before being entered and
occupied by men. One, Washington, laid out according to a comprehensive
and well-digested plan; the other, Salt Lake City, the creation--as all
else here--of Brigham Young.
The streets of Salt Lake City are all as wide as Pennsylvania Avenue.
The blocks, of ten acres each, immense. But these streets--the chief
ones are perfectly asphalted; running water flows in every side gutter;
great trees, long ago planted, shade every wide sidewalk; the electric
tram-cars run on tracks along the middle of the thoroughfare; and the
two wide roadways, on either side, are quite free from interfering wires
and poles. Many great blocks of fine buildings now rise along the
business sections, and the stores present as sumptuous displays of goods
and fabrics as anything we have seen in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or
New York. The town bears the marks of a great city. Great in its plan,
great in its development, great in its destiny. Truly, a capital fit for
the seat of power of the potent and comprehending Mormon church.
[Illustration: THE MORMON TITHING-HOUSE.]
[Illustration: THE MORMON "LION HOUSE."]
All the morning we have been viewing concrete, practical Mormondom, and
the sight has been most instructive. High above the buildings of the
city tower the imposing spires and pinnacles of the Temple, the most
immense ecclesiastical structure on the North American continent. Thirty
years was it in building, all of native granite, and costing more
than four millions of dollars. It stands in the central square of the
city, surrounded by a high adobe wall, and a Gentile may view only the
exterior.
Then we visited the famous Tabernacle beneath whose turtle-shaped roof
10,000 worshipers may sit, and whose acoustic properties are unrivaled
in the world. You can hear a whisper and a pin drop two hundred feet
away. In it is the immense organ possessing five hundred and twenty
stops, which, like the two great structures, was conceived and
constructed by the genius and patience of the Mormon architects. We were
shown about the grounds of the ecclesiastical enclosure--though not
permitted to enter the Temple--by a courteous-mannered lady whose black
eyes fired with religious enthusiasm as she explained the great
buildings. "My son is a missionary in Japan, giving his life to the
Lord. He preaches in Japanese, and is translating our holy books into
the Japanese tongue," she said, turning to an intelligent Japanese
tourist who was of our party.
We also bought some Mormon literature in the fine, modern sky-scraper
buildings of the _Deseret News_, and the bright young man, selling us
the books, showed us with evident pride the stores of elegantly printed
and bound volumes, all done here in Salt Lake City. They print their
books in every modern tongue, and their missionaries distribute them all
over the world.
Later, we viewed the fine college buildings where higher education is
given to the Mormon youth. We also saw the famous "Lion House," over
whose portal lies a sleeping lion, once the offices of Brigham Young,
now occupied by the ecclesiastical managers of the church. And also we
viewed the "Beehive House," where once Brigham dwelt; the Tithing House,
where is received and stored the ecclesiastical tithe tax of ten per
cent. of all crops raised and moneys earned by the devoted Mormon
believers; and the great bank run in connection with it.
All these evidences of practical, organized, devoted religious world
zeal have we beheld gathered and centrally grouped in the great city
founded and raised by these curious yet capable religious delusionists.
I asked about Mormonism of a Gentile stranger from another State, and he
replied in deferential tones: "No man in his senses now throws stones at
the Mormons; they are among the most industrious, most thrifty and most
respected people of the West."
To wander along and through the residence section of the city is also a
thing to surprise. Street after street of fine private dwellings, each
mansion standing in its own garden, upon its own lawn. Many of them very
modern, and many of them far exceeding in cost and imposing elegance any
residence Charleston, West Virginia, can yet boast--equal to the most
sumptuous homes of Pittsburg and St. Louis--and most of them owned and
lived in by cultivated families of the Mormon cult. And how the zeal
and faith and religious ardor of this strange sect even now to-day
burns in the atmosphere of this their Holy City! It is the same spirit
that we met in Holy Moscow, Russia's sacred capital--but more
enlightened, more practical.
And Mormonism is already a political as well as religious power in the
West. In Idaho, in Colorado, in Nevada, in Arizona, the Mormon vote is
to be considered and even catered to. In Alberta, the Mormon settlement
is said to be the most prosperous in the province. In Mexico, the Mormon
settlements, their astonishing productivity and fertility, are already
teaching the wonder-struck Mexican what irrigated agriculture may do.
And as I beheld this and the evident success of a religious sect which
mixes fanatical zeal with astute practical management, I asked myself
what is the real secret of their accomplishment and their power! Is it
the theory and practice of polygamy. Did or does polygamy have anything
to do with the unquestioned success and prosperity of the Mormon people?
I think not. Polygamy has been merely an incident, and the disappearance
of polygamy has in nowise lessened the formidable growth of Mormon
power. The secret, I think, is the secret of the amazing growth and
spread of early Christianity, the putting into actual practice the
Christian doctrine of the brotherhood of man--with them the brotherhood
of the Mormon man in particular. Once a Latter-day Saint, and all other
Saints are ready to lend you a hand, and the organized and ably
administered mechanism of the church lends the new Saint a hand as
well, and those hands once extended are never withdrawn except for
powerful and well-merited cause. The Mormon farmer feels that back of
his success is the ever helpful and protecting eye of his church in
material as well as spiritual things. The Gentile farmer may succeed or
may fail, and who cares; but the Mormon must succeed. If he do not
himself possess the innate power and force of character and judgment to
get on, then men will guide and aid him who do possess that power, and
so he gets on even in spite of himself. In a certain sense, the Mormons
practice the doctrine of collective socialism, and that collective unity
is the secret, I think, of their wonderful accomplishment.
The creed of the brotherhood of man, and of man within the Christian
pale, has been the secret of Christianity wherever it has won success.
The failure to heed it and obey it is the cause of failure to every
religious movement that has come to naught. And so long as the Mormon
Church adheres to this fundamental principle, just so long will it
continue to be a power, and a power of increasing weight.
And this cardinal principle is also the secret of their missionaries'
success. All over the world they are, in every State of the Union, in
nigh every land, and they serve without recompense, without pay even, as
did the early missionaries of the Christian Church.
[Illustration: GREAT SALT LAKE.]
There is and always has been a good deal of cleverness in the leadership
of the Mormon Church. It is an old adage that "The blood of her
martyrs is the seed of the church," and the Mormon leaders have
comprehended this from the start. Not only have they cultivated the
Christian socialism of the early church, but they have also never fled
from, but they rather have greatly profited by, a real good case of
martyrdom. The buffets and kicks of the Gentile world have helped, have
been essential in welding the Mormon believers into that political,
religious and social solidarity so much sought by the leaders. They were
driven from New York, from Ohio, from Missouri, then from Nauvoo. They
have been shot, stoned, murdered by scores. They have been imprisoned
and harried by the federal laws (very justly, perhaps). But the effect
of all this has been only to make them stand together all the closer.
Just now the attack upon Senator Smoot is profiting them immensely. He
sits by and smiles. He has only one wife. He is no more oath-bound to
his own church than is every Roman or Greek Archbishop vowed to his. A
matter of conscience only. The effort to oust him will probably fail,
but it's a good thing for the church to have him hammered. The more
martyrs, the fewer backsliders. The faithful line up, stand pat, the
church grows.
On the streets of Salt Lake City we have noted the very few vehicles of
fashion anywhere to be seen, and, on the other hand, the many
substantial farm wagons which generally seem to be driven by a woman
accompanied by one or more children, more usually a half-grown boy. The
men would seem to be working on the farms, while the women come into
town with the loads of produce. The faces, too, of these women were
generally intelligent and contented.
In our own country we frequently hear the Mormons denounced as
polygamists. In Utah and the neighboring States you hear nothing about
polygamy, and, upon inquiry, I was told that while once this tenet of
the church had been urged and practiced, yet that under modern social
conditions, which have come in with the railways, the younger Mormon of
to-day finds that one woman is all that he can take care of, and shows
no disposition to load himself up with the burden of half a dozen. To my
observation, the strength and danger of Mormonism is not in polygamy,
but rather in their social and political solidarity, the Mormon
president of the church wielding political influence over his followers
similar to, although in nowise so vast as, that of the Roman Pope.
Be these things as they may, it is at any rate worth while for a modern
Gentile to visit this center of the Mormon power, and gather from ocular
evidence of its vital, living, forceful presence such lessons as he may.
This afternoon we took a little railway and journeyed twelve miles to
Saltair, the Atlantic City or Virginia Beach of this metropolis, and
there we bathed in the supersaturated brine. I could swim on it, not in
it, so buoyant was the water, and my chief difficulty was to keep my
head out and my feet in. The lake is sixty miles wide by ninety miles
long, with several islands of high, barren hills. A few boats ply on it.
No fish can live in it, and the chief use of it is to evaporate its
waters for supply of salt. After dipping in it we came out quite
encrusted with a white film of intense salt.
To-night we go on to Denver, through the cañon of the Grand River.
SEVENTEENTH LETTER.
A BRONCHO-BUSTING MATCH.
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, October 16, 1903.
We left Salt Lake City by the express last night over the Denver & Rio
Grande Railway, starting three hours late. When we awoke, we were coming
up the canyon of the Green River, one of the head streams of the
Colorado, and had passed through the barren volcanic lava wastes of the
Colorado Desert during the night. The Green River flows between sheer,
naked volcanic rock masses, not very high, but jagged, no green thing
growing upon them. But the scanty bottom lands were often green with
alfalfa meadows and well-kept peach and apple orchards, the result of
irrigation.
From the valley of the Green River we crossed, passing through many deep
cuts and tunnels, to the Grand River, the eastern fork of the Colorado,
and followed up this stream all day. Very much the same sort of country
as before. The bare, ragged, verdureless cliffs and rock masses, dry and
plantless, only the red and yellow coloring of sandstone relieving the
monotony, and everywhere upon the scant bottom lands the greenness and
agriculture of irrigation. The aspen and maples, all a bright yellow,
but not so splendid a golden hue as the forests of the valley of the
Yukon.
Just before coming to Glenwood Springs, about noon, I had wandered
beyond my sleeper into the smoking-car, thinking to have a view of the
sort of men who got in and out at the way stations, and, seating myself
in a vacant place, picked up a conversation with my neighbor. Imagine my
surprise when I found him to be a fellow West Virginian, from
Clarksburg, taking a little summer trip in the West, himself a Mr.
Bassel, nephew of the well-known lawyer, John Bassel, of upper State
fame. He was going to stop off at Glenwood Springs to see one of
Colorado's most popular sports, a "broncho-busting" match, where were to
be gathered some of the most eminent masters of the art in the State. I
consulted my time-tables, ascertained that we might spend the afternoon
there and yet reach Denver the next morning, and when the train pulled
into the station, we were among the expectant throng who there
detrained.
The little town was all astir. A pile of Mexican saddles lay on the
platform, and a crowd of big, brawny men in wide felt hats, leathern
cowboy leggings and clanking spurs, were shouldering these, their
belongings, and moving up into the town.
The streets were full of people come in from the surrounding highlands,
where, high up on the "mesas" or plateaus above the valleys, lie some of
the finest cattle ranges in the State. Big, raw-boned, strong-chinned
men they were, bronzed with the sun and marked with a vigor bespeaking
life in the open air. The ladies, too, were out in force, well dressed,
not much color in their cheeks, but, like the men, possessing clean-cut,
clear-eyed faces. And up and down the wide streets were continually
galloping brawny riders, evidently arriving from their distant ranches.
The crowd stuck to the sidewalk and seemed expectant. We did not know
just what was going to happen, but stuck to the sidewalk, too, and well
for us it was that we did so. There were rumors of a parade. A number of
ranch maidens, riding restive bronchos, some sitting gracefully astride,
drew their horses to one side. The crowd was silent. We were silent,
too. Just then a cloud of dust and a clatter of hoofs came swirling and
echoing down the street. A troop of horses! They were running like mad.
They were bridleless, riderless; they were wild horses escaped. They ran
like things possessed. No, not all were riderless, for behind them,
urged by silent riders, each man with swinging lasso, came as many
cowboys hot on the chase. Had the wild horses broken loose? Could they
ever be headed off? We wondered. Was the fun for the day all vanished by
the accident? Not so, we found. This was part of the game. Every broncho
buster, if he would take part in the tests of ridership, must first
catch a wild horse, that later an opponent should master. And the way
those lassos swung and reached and dropped over the fleeing bronchos was
in itself a sight worth stopping to see. Then, as each rider came out
of the dust and distance leading the wild-eyed, terrified beast by his
unerring lasso, great was the acclaim given him by the hitherto silent
multitude. Every loose horse was caught before he had run half a mile,
and thus haltered--the lariat around the neck--was led to the corral
near the big meadow, where the man who should ride most perfectly would
win the longed-for prize--a champion's belt and a purse of gold.
[Illustration: NUCKOLDS, PUTTING ON THE HOODWINK.]
[Illustration: NUCKOLDS, THE BRONCHO "BUSTED."]
Many famous men were met there to win the trophy--the most coveted honor
a Coloradan or any ranchman may possess.
There was Marshall Nuckolds, of Rifle City, swarthy and black as an
Indian, who had won more than one trophy in hard-fought contests--his
square jaw meaning mastery of any four-footed thing that bucks. There
was Red Grimsby, long, and lank and lithe as a Comanche, with a blue eye
that tames a horse and man alike. There was big, loose-limbed Arizona
Moore, a new man in Glenwood, but preceded by his fame. He it was who
won that cowboy race in Cheyenne, not long since, when his horse fell,
and he underneath--dead, the shuddering audience thought him--and who
shook himself loose, re-mounted his horse and won the race amidst the
mad cheers of every mortal being on the course. He rode a fiery black
mustang, and was dressed in gorgeous white Angora goat's hair leggins, a
blue shirt, a handkerchief about his neck. Handy Harry Bunn, of Divide
Creek, was there too, a dapper little pile of bone and sinew, whom
broncho, buck as he might, never yet had thrown. And Freddy Conners,
solid and silent, and renowned among the boys on the ranches all 'round
about. And the two Thompson brothers, of Aspen, home boys, the youngest,
Dick, the pride of Grand River, for hadn't he won the $100 saddle in the
big match at Aspen last year, and then carried off the purse of gold at
Rifle City on the Fourth of last July! Slim and clean-muscled, and quick
as a flash he was, with a piercing black eye. The crowd on the streets
were all betting on Dick, and Dick was watching Arizona Moore like a
hawk. The honors probably lay between the two.
The big meadow in the midst of the mile track was the place. H---- sat
in the grandstand, my field-glasses in hand. I was invited to the
judges' stand, and even allowed with my kodak out in the field among the
judges who sat on their horses and followed the riders, taking points.
[Illustration: GRIMSBY AND THE JUDGES.]
[Illustration: BUNN, MAKING ROPE BRIDLE.]
Swarthy Nuckolds was the first man. He came out into the meadow carrying
his own saddle and rope and bridle. To him had fallen a wiry bay,
four-year old, never yet touched by man. First the horse was led out
with a lasso halter around its neck, then, when it came to a standstill,
Nuckolds, with the softness of a cat, slipped up and passed a rope
halter over its head, which he made cleverly into a bitless bridle, then
he stealthily, and before the horse knew it, hoodwinked it with a
leather band, and then when the horse could not see his motions, he
gently, oh, so gently, laid the big Mexican saddle on its back, and had
it double girt fast before the horse knew what had happened. Then he
waved his hand, the hoodwink was pulled off by two assistants, and
instantly he was in the saddle astride the astonished beast. For a
moment the horse stood wild-eyed, sweating with terror--and then, and
then--up it went like a bent hook, its head between its legs, its tail
down, its legs all in a bunch, and down it came, stiff-kneed, taut as
iron, and then up again, and so by leaps and bounds across the wide
field and back again right through the scrambling crowd. All the while
Nuckolds rising and falling in perfect unison with the mad motions of
the terrified horse--his hat gone, his black hair flying, his great whip
and heavy spurs goading the animal into subjection. At last he rode it
on a trot, mastered, subjugated, cowed, up to the judges' stand. The
horse stood quietly, trembling, sweating, wet as though having swum
Grand River. Wild were the yells that greeted Nuckolds. He had but added
to a reputation already made.