willows, and small but shady trees, an unusually vigorous vegetation,
refreshed, as though with living water, our eyes, parched and dazed by
the burning glare. Stock strayed over the pasture, and a few Indian
tents rose at the farther side; the view was probably _pas grand
chose_, but we thought it splendidly beautiful. At midday we reached
Ham’s Fork, the northwestern influent of Green River, and there we
found a station. The pleasant little stream is called by the Indians
Turugempa, the “Blackfoot Water.”
Again we advanced. The air was like the breath of a furnace; the sun
was a blaze of fire--accounting, by-the-by, for the fact that the human
nose in these parts seems invariably to become cherry-red--all the
nullahs were dried up, and the dust-pillars and mirage were the only
moving objects on the plain. Three times we forded Black’s Fork, and
then debouched once more upon a long flat. The ground was scattered
over with pebbles of granite, obsidian, flint, and white, yellow, and
smoky quartz, all water-rolled. After twelve miles we passed Church
Butte, one of many curious formations lying to the left hand or south
of the road. This isolated mass of still clay has been cut and ground
by wind and rain into folds and hollow channels which from a distance
perfectly simulate the pillars, groins, and massive buttresses of a
ruinous Gothic cathedral. The foundation is level, except where masses
have been swept down by the rain, and not a blade of grass grows upon
any part. An architect of genius might profitably study this work of
Nature: upon that subject, however, I shall presently have more to
say. The Butte is highly interesting in a geological point of view;
it shows the elevation of the adjoining plains in past ages, before
partial deluges and the rains of centuries had effected the great work
of degradation.
Again we sighted the pretty valley of Black’s Fork, whose cool clear
stream flowed merrily over its pebbly bed. The road was now populous
with Mormon emigrants; some had good teams, others hand-carts, which
looked like a cross between a wheel-barrow and a tax-cart. There was
nothing repugnant in the demeanor of the party; they had been civilized
by traveling, and the younger women, who walked together and apart
from the men, were not too surly to exchange a greeting. The excessive
barrenness of the land presently diminished; gentian and other
odoriferous herbs appeared, and the greasewood, which somewhat reminded
me of the Sindhian camel-thorn, was of a lighter green than elsewhere,
and presented a favorable contrast with the dull glaucous hues of the
eternal prairie sage. We passed a dwarf copse so strewed with the bones
of cattle as to excite our astonishment: Macarthy told us that it was
the place where the 2d Dragoons encamped in 1857, and lost a number of
their horses by cold and starvation. The wolves and coyotes seemed to
have retained a predilection for the spot; we saw troops of them in
their favorite “location”--the crest of some little rise, whence they
could keep a sharp look-out upon any likely addition to their scanty
larder.
An American artist might extract from such scenery as Church Butte and
Echo Kanyon a system of architecture as original and national as Egypt
ever borrowed from her sandstone ledges, or the North of Europe from
the solemn depths of her fir forests. But Art does not at present exist
in America; as among their forefathers farther east, of artists they
have plenty, of Art nothing.
After a few minutes’ delay to stand and gaze, we resumed the foot-path
way, while the mail-wagon, with wheels rough-locked, descended what
appeared to be an impracticable slope. The summit of the Pass was
well-nigh cleared of timber; the woodman’s song informed us that the
evil work was still going on, and that we are nearly approaching a
large settlement. Thus stripped of their protecting fringes, the
mountains are exposed to the heat of summer, that sends forth
countless swarms of devastating crickets, grasshoppers, and blue-worms;
and to the wintry cold, that piles up, four to six feet high--the
mountain-men speak of thirty and forty--the snows drifted by the
unbroken force of the winds. The Pass from November to February can be
traversed by nothing heavier than “sleighs,” and during the snow-storms
even these are stopped. Falling into the gorge of Big Kanyon Creek,
after a total of twelve hard miles from Bauchmin’s Fork, we reached
at 11:30 the station that bears the name of the water near which it
is built. We were received by the wife of the proprietor, who was
absent at the time of our arrival; and half stifled by the thick dust
and the sun, which had raised the glass to 103°, we enjoyed copious
draughts--_tant soit peu_ qualified--of the cool but rather hard water
that trickled down the hill into a trough by the house side. Presently
the station-master, springing from his light “sulky,” entered, and
was formally introduced to us by Mr. Macarthy as Mr. Ephe Hanks. I
had often heard of this individual as one of the old triumvirate of
Mormon desperadoes, the other two being Orrin Porter Rockwell and Bill
Hickman--as the leader of the dreaded Danite band, and, in short, as a
model ruffian. The ear often teaches the eye to form its pictures: I
had eliminated a kind of mental sketch of those assassin faces which
one sees on the Apennines and Pyrenees, and was struck by what met the
eye of sense. The “vile villain,” as he has been called by anti-Mormon
writers, who verily do not try to _ménager_ their epithets, was a
middle-sized, light-haired, good-looking man, with regular features, a
pleasant and humorous countenance, and the manly manner of his early
sailor life, touched with the rough cordiality of the mountaineer.
“Frank as a bear-hunter” is a proverb in these lands. He had, like
the rest of the triumvirate, and like most men (Anglo-Americans) of
desperate courage and fiery, excitable temper, a clear, pale blue eye,
verging upon gray, and looking as if it wanted nothing better than to
light up, together with a cool and quiet glance that seemed to shun
neither friend nor foe.
The terrible Ephe began with a facetious allusion to all our new
dangers under the roof of a Danite, to which, in similar strain, I
made answer that Danite or Damnite was pretty much the same to me.
After dining, we proceeded to make trial of the air-cane, to which he
took, as I could see by the way he handled it, and by the nod with
which he acknowledged the observation, “almighty convenient sometimes
not to make a noise, Mister,” a great fancy. He asked me whether I
had a mind to “have a slap” at his namesake,[16] an offer which was
gratefully accepted, under the promise that “cuffy” should previously
be marked down so as to save a long ride and a troublesome trudge over
the mountains. His battery of “kill-b’ars” was heavy and in good order,
so that on this score there would have been no trouble, and the only
tool he bade me bring was a Colt’s revolver, dragoon size. He told me
that he was likely to be in England next year, when he had set the “ole
woman” to her work. I suppose my look was somewhat puzzled, for Mrs.
Dana graciously explained that every Western wife, even when still, as
Mrs. Ephe was, in her teens, commands that venerable title, venerable,
though somehow not generally coveted.
From Big Kanyon Creek Station to the city, the driver “reckoned,” was
a distance of seventeen miles. We waited till the bright and glaring
day had somewhat burned itself out; at noon heavy clouds came up from
the south and southwest, casting a grateful shade and shedding a few
drops of rain. After taking friendly leave of the “Danite” chief--whose
cordiality of manner had prepossessed me strongly in his favor--we
entered the mail-wagon, and prepared ourselves for the finale over the
westernmost ridge of the stern Wasach.
After advancing about 1.50 mile over the bench ground, the city by
slow degrees broke upon our sight. It showed, one may readily believe,
to special advantage after the succession of Indian lodges, Canadian
ranchos, and log-hut mail-stations of the prairies and the mountains.
The site has been admirably chosen for drainage and irrigation--so
well, indeed, that a “Deus ex machinâ” must be brought to account for
it.[17] About two miles north, and overlooking the settlements from
a height of 400 feet, a detached cone, called Ensign Peak or Ensign
Mount, rises at the end of a chain which, projected westward from the
main range of the heights, overhangs and shelters the northeastern
corner of the valley. Upon this “big toe of the Wasach range,” as
it is called by a local writer, the spirit of the martyred prophet,
Mr. Joseph Smith, appeared to his successor, Mr. Brigham Young, and
pointed out to him the position of the New Temple, which, after Zion
had “got up into the high mountain,” was to console the Saints for
the loss of Nauvoo the Beautiful. The city--it is about two miles
broad--runs parallel with the right bank of the Jordan, which forms its
western limit. It is twelve to fifteen miles distant from the western
range, ten from the debouchure of the river, and eight to nine from
the nearest point of the lake--a respectful distance, which is not
the least of the position’s merits. It occupies the rolling brow of a
slight decline at the western base of the Wasach--in fact, the lower,
but not the lowest level of the eastern valley-bench; it has thus a
compound slope from north to south, on the line of its water supplies,
and from east to west, thus enabling it to drain off into the river.
The city revealed itself, as we approached, from behind its screen,
the inclined terraces of the upper table-land, and at last it lay
stretched before us as upon a map. The fields were large and numerous,
but the Saints have too many and various occupations to keep them,
Moravian-like, neat and trim; weeds overspread the ground; often the
wild sunflower-tops outnumbered the heads of maize. The fruit had
suffered from an unusually nipping frost in May; the peach-trees were
barren; the vines bore no produce; only a few good apples were in Mr.
Brigham Young’s garden, and the watermelons were poor, yellow, and
tasteless, like the African. On the other hand, potatoes, onions,
cabbages, and cucumbers were good and plentiful, the tomato was
ripening everywhere, fat full-eared wheat rose in stacks, and crops
of excellent hay were scattered about near the houses. The people
came to their doors to see the mail-coach, as if it were the “Derby
dilly” of old, go by. I could not but be struck by the modified
English appearance of the colony, and by the prodigious numbers of the
white-headed children.
Presently we debouched upon the main thoroughfare, the centre of
population and business, where the houses of the principal Mormon
dignitaries and the stores of the Gentile merchants combine to form the
city’s only street which can be properly so called. It is, indeed, both
street and market, for, curious to say, New Zion has not yet built for
herself a bazar or market-place. Nearly opposite the Post Office, in a
block on the eastern side, with a long veranda, supported by trimmed
and painted posts, was a two-storied, pent-roofed building, whose
sign-board, swinging to a tall, gibbet-like flagstaff, dressed for the
occasion, announced it to be the Salt Lake House, the principal if not
the only establishment of the kind in New Zion. In the Far West, one
learns not to expect much of the hostelry;[18] I had not seen aught
so grand for many a day. Its depth is greater than its frontage, and
behind it, secured by a _porte cochère_, is a large yard for corralling
cattle. A rough-looking crowd of drivers, drivers’ friends, and idlers,
almost every man openly armed with revolver and bowie-knife, gathered
round the doorway to greet Jim, and “prospect” the “new lot”; and the
host came out to assist us in transporting our scattered effects. We
looked vainly for a bar on the ground floor; a bureau for registering
names was there, but (temperance, in public at least, being the order
of the day) the usual tempting array of bottles and decanters was
not forthcoming; up stairs we found a Gentile ball-room, a tolerably
furnished sitting-room, and bedchambers, apparently made out of a
single apartment by partitions too thin to be strictly agreeable. The
household had its deficiencies; blacking, for instance, had run out,
and servants could not be engaged till the expected arrival of the
hand-cart train. However, the proprietor, Mr. Townsend, a Mormon, from
the State of Maine--when expelled from Nauvoo, he had parted with land,
house, and furniture for $50--who had married an Englishwoman, was
in the highest degree civil and obliging, and he attended personally
to our wants, offered his wife’s services to Mrs. Dana, and put us
all in the best of humors, despite the closeness of the atmosphere,
the sadness ever attending one’s first entrance into a new place,
the swarms of “emigration flies”--so called because they appear in
September with the emigrants, and, after living for a month, die off
with the first snow--and a certain populousness of bedstead, concerning
which the less said the better. Such, gentle reader, are the results of
my first glance at Zion on the tops of the mountains, in the Holy City
of the Far West.
Our journey had occupied nineteen days, from the 7th to the 25th of
August, both included; and in that time we had accomplished not less
than 1136 statute miles.
Walking in a northward direction up Main, otherwise called Whisky
Street, we could not but observe the “magnificent distances” of the
settlement, which, containing 9000-12,000 souls, covers an area of
three miles. This broadway is 132 feet wide, including the side-walks,
which are each twenty, and, like the rest of the principal avenues, is
planted with locust and other trees. There are twenty or twenty-one
wards or cantons, numbered from the S.E. “boustrophedon” to the N.W.
corner. They have a common fence and a bishop apiece. They are called
after the creeks, trees, people, or positions, as Mill-Creek Ward,
Little Cotton-wood, Denmark, and South Ward. Every ward contains about
nine blocks, each of which is forty rods square. The area of ten acres
is divided into four to eight lots, of two and a half to one and a
quarter acres each, 264 feet by 132. A city ordinance places the houses
twenty feet behind the front line of the lot, leaving an intermediate
place for shrubbery or trees. This rule, however, is not observed in
Main Street.
The streets are named from their direction to the Temple Block. Thus
Main Street is East Temple Street No. 1; that behind it is State Road,
or East Temple Street 2, and so forth, the ward being also generally
specified. Temple Block is also the point to which latitude and
longitude are referred. It lies in N. lat. 40° 45′ 44″, W. long. (G.)
112° 6′ 8″, and 4300 feet above sea level.
Main Street is rapidly becoming crowded. The western block, opposite
the hotel, contains about twenty houses of irregular shape and
size. The buildings are intended to supply the principal wants of
a far-Western settlement, as bakery, butchery, and blacksmithery,
hardware and crockery, paint and whip warehouse, a “fashionable
tailor”--and “fashionable” in one point, that his works are more
expensive than Poole’s[19]--shoe-stores, tannery and curriery; the
Pantechnicon, on a more pretentious style than its neighbors, kept
by Mr. Gilbert Clements, Irishman and orator; dry-goods, groceries,
liquors, and furniture shops, Walker’s agency, and a kind of restaurant
for ice-cream, a luxury which costs 25 cents a glass; saddlers, dealers
in “food, flour, and provisions,” hats, shoes, clothing, sash laths,
shingles, timber, copper, tin, crockery-ware, carpenters’ tools, and
mouse-traps.... The Tabernacle is 126 feet long from N. to S., and
64 wide from E. to W.; its interior, ceilinged with an elliptical
arch--the width being its span--can accommodate 2000-3000 souls. It
urgently requires enlarging. Over the entrances at the gable ends,
which open to the N. and S., is a wood-work representing the sun,
with his usual coiffure of yellow beams, like a Somali’s wig, or the
symbol of the Persian empire. The roof is of shingles: it shelters
under its projecting eaves a whole colony of swallows, and there are
four chimneys--a number insufficient for warmth at one season, or
for ventilation at the other. The speaker or preacher stands on the
west side of the building, which is reserved for the three highest
dignities, viz., the First Presidency, the “Twelve” (Apostles), and
the President of the State of Zion: distinguished strangers are also
admitted. Of late, as in the old Quaker meeting-houses at Philadelphia,
the brethren in the Tabernacle have been separated from the “sistern,”
who sit on the side opposite the preacher’s left; and, according to
Gentiles, it is proposed to separate the Christians from the Faithful,
that the “goats” may no longer mingle with the sheep.
Immediately north of the Tabernacle is the Bowery--in early spring a
canopy of green leafy branches, which are left to wither with the year,
supported on wooden posts.
In the extreme northwest angle of the block is the Endowment, here
pronounced _On-dewment House_, separated from the Tabernacle by a high
wooden paling. The building, of which I made a pen and ink sketch
from the west, is of adobe, with a pent roof and four windows, one
blocked up: the central and higher portion is flanked by two wings,
smaller erections of the same shape. The Endowment House is the place
of great medicine, and all appertaining to it is carefully concealed
from Gentile eyes and ears: the result is that human sacrifices are
said to be performed within its walls. Mrs. Smith and Mr. Hyde have
described the mysterious rites performed within these humble walls,
but, for reasons given before, there is reason to doubt the truth of
their descriptions; such orgies as they describe could not coexist with
the respectability which is the law of the land. M. Remy has detailed
the programme with all the exactitude of an eye-witness, which he was
not. The public declare that the ceremonies consist of some show,
which in the Middle Ages would be called a comedy or mystery--possibly
Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained--and connect it with the working
of a mason’s lodge. The respectable Judge Phelps, because supposed
to take the place of the Father of Sin when tempting Adam and Eve,
is popularly known as “the Devil.” The two small wings are said to
contain fonts for the two sexes, where baptism by total immersion is
performed. According to Gentiles, the ceremony occupies eleven or
twelve hours. The neophyte, after bathing, is anointed with oil, and
dressed in clean white cotton garments, cap and shirt, of which the
latter is rarely removed--Dr. Richards saved his life at the Carthage
massacre by wearing it--and a small square masonic apron, with worked
or painted fig-leaves: he receives a new name and a distinguishing
grip, and is bound to secrecy by dreadful oaths. Moreover, it is said
that, as in all such societies, there are several successive degrees,
all of which are not laid open to initiation till the Temple shall
be finished. But--as every mason knows--the “red-hot poker” and other
ideas concerning masonic institutions have prevailed when juster
disclosures have been rejected. Similarly in the Mormonic mystery, it
is highly probable that, in consequence of the conscientious reserve of
the people upon a subject which it would be indelicate to broach, the
veriest fancies have taken the deepest root.
After dining with the governor, we sat under the stoop enjoying, as we
might in India, the cool of the evening. Several visitors dropped in,
among them Mr. and Mrs. Stenhouse. He--Elder T. B. H. Stenhouse--is a
Scotchman by birth, and has passed through the usual stages of neophyte
(larva), missionary (pupa), and elder or fully-developed Saint (imago).
Madame was from Jersey, spoke excellent French, talked English without
nasalization or cantalenation, and showed a highly cultivated mind. She
had traveled with her husband on a propagandist tour to Switzerland
and Italy, where, as president of the missions for three years, he
was a “diligent and faithful laborer in the great work of the last
dispensation.”
He became a Saint in 1846, at the age of 21; lived the usual life
of poverty and privation, founded the Southampton Conference,
converted a lawyer among other great achievements, and propagated
the Faith successfully in Scotland as in England. The conversation
turned--somehow in Great Salt Lake City it generally does--upon
polygamy, or rather plurality, which here is the polite word, and
for the first time I heard that phase of the family tie sensibly,
nay, learnedly advocated on religious grounds by fair lips. Mr.
Stenhouse kindly offered to accompany me on the morrow, as the first
hand-cart train was expected to enter, and to point out what might be
interesting. I saw Elder and High-Priest Stenhouse almost every day
during my stay at Great Salt Lake City, and found in his society both
pleasure and profit. We of course avoided those mysterious points,
into which, as an outsider, I had no right to enter; the elder was
communicative enough upon all others, and freely gave me leave to use
his information. The reader, however, will kindly bear in mind that,
being a strict Mormon, Mr. Stenhouse could enlighten me only upon one
side of the subject; his statements were therefore carefully referred
to the “other part”; moreover, as he could never see any but the
perfections of his system, the blame of having pointed out what I deem
its imperfections is not to be charged upon him. His power of faith
struck me much. I had once asked him what became of the Mormon Tables
of the Law, the Golden Plates which, according to the Gentiles, were
removed by an angel after they had done their work. He replied that he
knew not; that his belief was independent of all such accidents; that
Mormonism is and must be true to the exclusion of all other systems.
I saw before me an instance how the brain or mind of man can, by mere
force of habit and application, imbue itself with any idea.
Long after dark I walked home alone. There were no lamps in any but
Main Street, yet the city is as safe as at St. James’s Square, London.
There are perhaps not more than twenty-five or thirty constables or
policemen in the whole place, under their captain, a Scotchman, Mr.
Sharp, “by name as well as nature so”; and the guard on public works
is merely nominal. Its excellent order must be referred to the perfect
system of private police, resulting from the constitution of Mormon
society, which in this point resembles the caste system of Hindooism.
There is no secret from the head of the Church and State; everything,
from the highest to the lowest detail of private and public life,
must be brought to the ear and submitted to the judgment of the
father-confessor-in-chief. Gentiles often declare that the Prophet
is acquainted with their every word half an hour after it is spoken;
and from certain indices, into which I hardly need enter, my opinion
is that, allowing something for exaggeration, they are not very far
wrong. In London and Paris the foreigner is subjected, though perhaps
he may not know it, to the same surveillance, and till lately his
letters were liable to be opened at the Post Office. We cannot, then,
wonder that at Great Salt Lake City, a stranger, before proving himself
at least to be harmless, should begin by being an object of suspicion.