The rival cities of Denver and Auraria front on each other from either
bank of Cherry Creek, just before it is lost in the South Platte. The
Platte has its sources in and around the South Park of the Rocky
Mountains, a hundred miles south-west of this point; but Cherry Creek is
headed off from them by that river, and, winding its northward course of
forty or fifty miles over the plains, with its sources barely touching
the Mountains, is a capricious stream, running quite smartly when we
came here, but whose broad and thirsty sands have since drank it all up
at this point, leaving the log footbridges which connect the two cities
as useless as an ice-house in November. The Platte, aided by the melting
of the snows on the higher mountains, runs nearly full-banked, though
the constant succession of hot suns and dry winds begins to tell upon
it; white Clear Creek (properly Vasquer’s Fork), which issues directly
from the Mountains just above its crossing on the way to the Gregory
diggings, is nearly at its highest, and will so remain till the inner
mountains are mainly denuded of their snowy mantles. But, within a few
days, a foot-bridge has been completed over the Platte, virtually
abolishing the ferry and saving considerable time and money to
gold-seekers and travelers; while another over Clear Creek precludes not
only delay but danger—several wagons having been wrecked and two or
three men all but drowned in attempts to ford its rapid, rocky current.
Thus the ways of the adventurous grow daily smoother; and they who visit
this region ten years hence, will regard as idle tales the stories of
privation, impediment, and “hair-breadth ’scapes” which are told, or
might be, by the gold-seekers of 1859.
Of these rival cities, Auraria is by far the more venerable—some of its
structures being, I think, fully a year old, if not more. Denver, on the
other hand, can boast of no antiquity beyond September or October last.
In the architecture of the two cities there is, notwithstanding, a
striking similarity—cotton-wood logs, cut from the adjacent bottom of
the Platte, roughly hewed on the upper and under sides, and chinked with
billets of split cotton-wood on the inner, and with mud on the outer
side, forming the walls of nearly or quite every edifice which adorns
either city. Across the center of the interior, from shorter wall to
wall, stretches a sturdy ridge-pole, usually in a state of nature, from
which “shooks,” or split saplings of cotton-wood, their split sides
down, incline gently to the transverse or longer sides; on these (in the
more finished structures) a coating of earth is laid; and, with a
chimney of mud-daubed sticks in one corner, a door nearly opposite, and
a hole beside it representing or prefiguring a window, the edifice is
complete. Of course, many have no earth on their covering of shooks, and
so are liable to gentle inundation in the rainy season; but, though we
have had thunder and lightning almost daily, with a brisk gale in most
instances, there has been no rain worth naming such here for weeks, and
the unchinked, barely shook-covered houses, through whose sides and
roofs you may see the stars as you lie awake nights, are decidedly the
cooler and airier. There is a new hotel nearly finished in Auraria,
which has a second story (but no first story) floor; beside this, mine
eyes have never yet been blessed with the sight of any floor whatever in
either Denver or Auraria. The last time I slept or ate with a floor
under me (our wagon-box and mother earth excepted) was at Junction City,
nearly four weeks ago. The “Denver House,” which is the Astor House of
the gold region, has walls of logs, a floor of earth, with windows and
roof of rather flimsy cotton-sheeting; while every guest is allowed as
good a bed as his blankets will make. The charges are no higher than at
the Astor and other first-class hotels, except for liquor—twenty-five
cents a drink for dubious whisky, colored and nicknamed to suit the
taste of customers—being the regular rate throughout this region. I had
the honor to be shaved there by a nephew (so he assured me) of Murat,
Bonaparte’s king of Naples—the honor and the shave together costing but
a paltry dollar. Still, a few days of such luxury surfeited me, mainly
because the main or drinking-room was also occupied by several blacklegs
as a gambling-hall, and their incessant clamor of “Who’ll go me twenty?
The ace of hearts is the winning card. Whoever turns the ace of hearts
wins the twenty dollars,” etc. etc., persisted in at all hours up to
midnight, became at length a nuisance, from which I craved deliverance
at any price. Then the visitors of that drinking and gambling-room had a
careless way, when drunk, of firing revolvers, sometimes at each other,
at other times quite miscellaneously, which struck me as inconvenient
for a quiet guest with only a leg and a half, hence in poor condition
for dodging bullets. So I left.
“How do you live in Denver?” I inquired of a New York friend some weeks
domiciled here, in whose company I visited the mines. “O, I’ve jumped a
cabin,” was his cool, matter-of-course reply. As jumping a cabin was
rather beyond my experience, I inquired further, and learned that,
finding an uninhabited cabin that suited him, he had quietly entered and
spread his blankets, eating at home or abroad as opportunity might
suggest. I found, on further inquiry, that at least one-third of the
habitations in Denver and Auraria were desolate when we came here (they
have been gradually filling up since), some of the owners having gone
into the mountains, digging or prospecting, and taken their limited
supply of household goods along with them; while others, discouraged by
the poor show of mining six weeks ago, when even the nearer mountains
were still covered with snow and ice, rushed pell-mell down the Platte
with the wild reflux of the spring emigration, abandoning all but what
they could carry away. It is said that lots and cabins together sold for
twenty-five dollars—so long as there were purchasers; but these soon
failing, they were left behind like camp-fires in the morning, and have
since been at the service of all comers.
So, in company with a journalizing friend, I, too, have “jumped a
cabin,” and have kept to it quite closely, under a doctor’s care, for
the last week or ten days. It is about ten feet square, and eight feet
high, rather too well chinked for summer, considering that it lacks a
window, but must be a capital house for this country in winter. I board
with the nearest neighbor; and it is not my landlady’s fault that the
edible resources of Denver are decidedly limited. But even these are
improving. To the bread, bacon, and beans, which formed the staple of
every meal a short time ago, there have been several recent additions;
milk, which was last week twenty-five cents per quart, is now down to
ten, and I hear a rumor that eggs, owing to a recent increase in the
number of hens, within five hundred miles, from four or five to twelve
or fifteen, are about to fall from a dollar a dozen to fifty cents per
dozen. On every side, I note signs of progress—improvement—manifest
destiny:—there was a man about the city yesterday with lettuce to
sell—and I am credibly assured that there will be green peas next
month—actually peas!—provided it should rain soakingly meantime—whereof
a hazy, lowering sky would seem just now to afford some hope. (P. S. The
hope has vanished.) But I—already sadly behind, and nearly able to
travel again—must turn my back on this promise of luxuries, and take the
road to Laramie to-day, or at furthest to-morrow.
XVI.
FROM DENVER TO LARAMIE.
FORT LARAMIE, _June 27, 1859_.
I left Denver at 3, P. M., on Tuesday, 21st inst. There are two roads
thence to this point: that usually preferred follows down the east fork
of the South Platte some forty miles, crossing that river near St.
Vrain’s (deserted) Fort, thus avoiding several rapid and difficult
creeks, and crossing Cache-la-Poudre near its mouth, where, like nearly
all these streams, it is broader and shallower than where it issues from
the Rocky Mountains. My guide had expected to take this route till the
last moment, when he learned that the South Platte was entirely too high
to be forded near St. Vrain’s Fort, or any where else, and that there
was now no ferry-boat for two hundred miles below Denver; hence he had
no choice but to take the upper or mountain-route. So we crossed the
Platte directly at Denver, and Clear Creek some three or four miles
below the road to Gregory’s Diggings, by a bad, difficult ford,
embellished by some half-dozen deep, ugly “sloughs” in the bottom on
either side, the creek being so high that the bottom was flooded in
part, and very miry. This high water cut us off from a purposed call on
a hunter in the bottom, of whom we had expected to obtain fresh meat for
our journey. We pushed on ten miles further, and camped for the night
opposite “Boulder City,” a log hamlet of some thirty habitations,
covering the entrance to “Boulder Diggings,” twelve miles westward in
the mountains. Here we found four wagons, two of them with horse-teams,
each conveying the luggage of four or five men who, having taken a look
at this gold region, had decided to push on for California, most of
them, I believe, through what is known as the “Cherokee Trail,” which
forms a part of the shortest practicable route from Denver to Salt Lake.
I was strongly tempted at Denver to join one of these parties, and go
through this pass—had I stood firmly on both feet, I think I should have
done it, saving distance, though losing time. We all camped for the
night beside a small brook, the rippling of whose waters over its pebbly
bed fell soothingly on the drowsy ear. I had the wagon to myself for a
bedchamber, while my three companions spread their buffalo-skin and
blankets on the grass, and had the vault of heaven for their ceiling.
The night was cool and breezy; our mules were picketed on the grass at a
short distance; our supper of fried pork and pilot-bread had not
surfeited us; and we slept quietly till the first dawn of day, when our
mules were quickly harnessed, and we left our fellow-campers still
torpid, pushing on fifteen miles, and crossing two deep, swift,
steep-banked creeks (St. Vrain’s Fork, and a branch of Thompson’s Creek)
before stopping for feed and breakfast. After two hours’ rest, we
harnessed up, and made twenty miles more before stopping, at the
crossing of the other fork of Thompson’s Creek for dinner. Here we found
a caravan moving from Missouri to California, which reminded me of the
days of Abraham and Lot. It comprised six or seven heavy wagons, mainly
drawn by oxen, with a light traveling carriage and pair of horses
conveying the patriarch’s family, some two or three hundred head of
cows, steers, and young cattle, with three or four young men on
horseback driving and keeping the herd. Girls were milking, women
cooking or washing, children playing—in short, here was the material for
a very fair settlement, or quite an imposing Kansas city. While we were
snoozing, they hitched up and moved on before us, but we very soon
overtook and passed them. There are scores of such caravans now on the
various roads to California, many of which will see very hard tunes ere
they reach Carson Valley, and some still harder before they get fairly
across the Sierra Nevada. Many of them are behind time; the feed—for
most of the way scanty at best—has been devoured by the cattle ahead of
them, and the drouth forbids the growth of more until September, in
which month snow begins to fall heavily on the Sierra Nevada. And it
will not tend to rouse their flagging spirits to meet—as I am well
assured they must—similar caravans of people, who, having tried
California to their full satisfaction, are now moving back to Missouri
again. Was there ever another such vagrant, restless, discontented
people, pretending to be civilized, as ours!
Pushing on steadily over a reasonably level country, though crossed by
many deep and steep-banked dry gullies, and perhaps one petty living
stream, we stood at 5 P. M. on the south bank of Cache-la-Poudre,
seventy miles from Denver, and by far the most formidable stream between
the South Platte and the Laramie. Our conductor was as brave as
mountaineer need be, but he was wary as well, and had seen so many
people drowned in fording such streams, especially the Green River
branch of the Colorado, on which he spent a year or two, that he chose
to feel his way carefully. So he waited and observed for an hour or
more, meantime sending word to an old French mountaineer friend from
Utah, who has pitched his tent here, that his help was wanted. There had
been a ferry-boat at this crossing till two nights before, when it went
down stream, and had not since been heard of. A horseman we met some
miles below, assured us that there was no crossing; but this we found a
mistake—two men mounted on strong horses crossing safely before our
eyes, and two heavy-laden ox-wagons succeeding them in doing the same,
save that one of them stuck in the stream, and the oxen had to be taken
off and driven out, being unable to pull it while themselves were half
buried in the swift current. But these crossings were made from the
other side, where the entrance was better and the current rather favored
the passage; the ox-wagons were held to the bottom by the weight of
their loads, while our “ambulance” was light, and likely to be swept
down stream. At length our French friend appeared, mounted on a powerful
horse, with an Indian attendant on another such. He advised us to stay
where we were for the night, promising to come in the morning with a
heavy ox-team and help us over. As this, however, involved a loss of at
least ten miles on our next day’s drive, our conductor resolved to make
an attempt now. So the Frenchman on his strong horse took one of our
lead-mules by the halter and the Indian took the other, and we went in,
barely escaping an upset from going down the steep bank obliquely, and
thus throwing one side of our wagon much above the other; but we righted
in a moment and went through—the water being at least three feet deep
for about a hundred yards, the bottom broken by the bowlders, and the
current very strong. We camped so soon as fairly over, lit a fire, and,
having obtained a quarter of antelope from our French friend, proceeded
to prepare and discuss a most satisfactory supper. Table, of course,
there was none, and we had unluckily lost our fork; but we had still two
knives, a sufficiency of tin-cups and plates, with an abundance of pork
and pilot-bread, and an old bag for table-cloth which had evidently seen
hard service, and had gathered more dirt and blood in the course of it
than a table-cloth actually needs. But the antelope ham was fresh, fat,
and tender; and it must have weighed less by three pounds when that
supper was ended than when its preparation was commenced.
By the way, there was a discussion at supper between my three
companions—all mountaineers of ripe experience—as to the relative merits
of certain meats, of which I give the substance for the benefit of
future travelers through this wild region, buffalo I found to be a
general favorite, though my own experience of it makes it a tough, dry,
wooden fiber, only to be eaten under great provocation. I infer that it
is poorer in spring than at other seasons, and that I have not been
fortunate in cooks. Boar, I was surprised to learn, is not generally
liked by mountaineers—my companions had eaten every species, and were
not pleased with any. The black-tailed deer of the mountains is a
general favorite; so is the mountain-hen or grouse; so is the antelope,
of course; the elk and mountain-sheep less decidedly so. None of our
party liked horse, or knew any way of cooking it that would make it
really palatable, though of course it has to be eaten occasionally, for
necessity hath no law—or rather, is its own law. Our conductor had eaten
broiled wolf, under compulsion, but could not recommend it; but he
certified that a slice of cold boiled dog—_well_ boiled, so as to free
it from rankness, and then suffered to cool thoroughly—is tender, sweet
and delicate as lamb. I ought to have ascertained the species and age of
the dog in whose behalf this testimony was borne—for a young
Newfoundland or king Charles might justify the praise, while it would be
utterly unwarranted in the case of an old cur or mastiff—but the
opportunity was lost, and I can only give the testimony as I received
it.
Cache-la-Poudre seems to be the center of the antelope country. There
are no settlements, save a small beginning just at this ford, as yet
hardly three months old—between Denver, seventy miles on one side, and
Laramie, one hundred and thirty on the other. The North Platte and the
Laramie, both head in the mountains, forty to eighty miles due west of
this point, thence pursuing a generally north course for more than a
hundred miles among the hills, which are here lower and less steep than
further south. The bold, high, regular front displayed by the Rocky
Mountains for at least a hundred (and, I believe, for two hundred) miles
south of the Cache-la-Poudre, hence gradually melts away into a
succession of softer, rounder, lower hills; snow disappears; the line
between the mountains and the plains is no longer straight and sharply
defined; and the still waters of the plain have for some miles an
alkaline appearance, beside being very scarce in summer. The Cherokee
Trail plunges into the mountains on the north side of and very near to
Cache-la-Poudre; and henceforth we overtake no emigrants moving
westward—none of any sort—but meet a few in wagons making for Boulder
City or the Gregory Diggings. Since we crossed Clear Creek, on which
there is on this trail a decent fringe of cotton-wood, we had seen but
the merest shred of small cotton-woods and some shrub willow at wide
intervals along the larger water-courses; but the pine still sparsely
covered the face of the Rocky Mountains. Cache-la-Poudre has quite a
fair belt of cotton-wood; thenceforth there is scarcely a cord of wood
to a township for the next fifty or sixty miles; and the pine is no
longer visible on the hills near us, because they expose little rock,
and hence are swept by the annual fires. The high prairie on either side
is thinly, poorly grassed, being of moderate fertility at best, often
full of pebbles of the average size of a goose-egg, and apparently
doomed to sterility by drouth. This region, though inferior in soil, and
less smooth in surface, is not dissimilar in its topography to Lombardy,
and like it will in time be subjected to systematic irrigation, should
the Rocky Mountain gold mines prove rich and extensive. Some of the
streams crossed by our road might easily be so dammed at their egress
from the mountains as to irrigate miles in width to the South Platte,
forty or fifty miles distant; and, at the prices which vegetables must
always command here should the gold mines prove inexhaustible, the
enterprise would pay well. I was told at Cache-la-Poudre that
encouraging signs of gold had been obtained on that stream, though it
had only begun to be prospected.
We were up and away betimes, still over thinly grassed, badly-watered
prairie, rather level in its general outlines, but badly cut by
steep-banked water-courses, now dry. Some shallow ponds are also formed
here in the wet season, but the last of them had just dried up. We drove
fifteen miles, and stopped for breakfast on a feeble tributary of
Cache-la-Poudre, named Box Elder, from a small tree which I first
observed here, and which is poorer stuff, if possible, than cotton-wood.
This is the only tributary which joins the Cache-la-Poudre below its
egress from the mountains. All the streams of this region are largest
where they emerge from the mountains, unless re-enforced below by other
streams having a like origin; the thirsty prairie contributes nothing,
but begins to drink them up from the time they strike it. The smaller
streams are thus utterly absorbed in the course of five to ten miles,
unless they happen sooner to be lost in some larger creek. Drouth,
throughout each summer, is the inexorable and desolating tyrant of the
plains.
Rising from the valley of Box Elder, we passed over a divide, and were
soon winding our way among the _Buttes_, or irregular, loosely
aggregated hills, which form a prominent feature of the next seventy or
eighty miles, and which I must try to give some idea of.
The soil of this region, like that of the plains generally, is mainly
clay, with some sand and gravel intermixed—the gravel probably washed
from the mountains. Here, though not at a distance from the mountains,
loose, water-rounded stones, from the size of a pigeon’s egg up to that
of a man’s head, are often, though by no means uniformly, intermingled
with the soil, especially near the beds of streams. These stones are of
various kinds and colors, including quartz, indicating a mountain
origin. But there seems to be no underlying rock in place—that is, none
at any depth attained by the deepest water-courses—and the soil, when
sodden by the pouring rains of winter and early spring, seems unable to
oppose any resistance to the washing, wearing influence of every stream
or rill. The average level of the plains would seem to have once been at
least forty or fifty feet higher than at present, the greater part of
the earth to that depth having been gradually worn away and carried down
the streams to the Missouri and lower Mississippi. But there are
localities which, from one cause or another, more or less obstinately
resist this constant abrasion; and these are gradually moulded into
hills by the abstraction annually proceeding all around them. Some of
them have been washed down to so gentle a slope that grass covers them
completely, and prevents further loss; but the greater number are still
being gullied, washed and worn away by the influence of each violent
rain. Others have living streams at their base, which, having once taken
a sheer against them, are continually increasing the acuteness of their
angles and gouging more and more decidedly into their banks,
occasionally flinging down tons of undermined earth into their channels
to be gradually carried off, as so much has already been. In such
places, the Buttes are nearly perpendicular and square-faced; but they
are more apt to be circular, and steeper near the summit than below. In
some instances, the earth is of a bright vermilion color; in others,
partly thus and partly white; giving the Buttes a variegated and
fantastic appearance, like that of the Pictured Rocks of Lake Superior.
When first seen from a distance, the _ensemble_ of the red Buttes is
very striking. But the white clay, as it is gradually washed away,
leaving surfaces almost or quite perpendicular exposed to the action of
sun, air and water, is, by some occult agency, gradually hardened into a
kind of rock, of which long ranges of perpendicular bluffs are composed,
sometimes miles in extent, but broken and disturbed at intervals by the
intervention of water-courses or other influences.
After leaving Box Elder, our road gradually ascended, winding among the
rounded and less regularly arranged Buttes first described above, but
passing no water but a single spring and little available grass, until
it descends a long hill to a fork of Howard’s Creek, twenty miles from
Box Elder. Here we stopped for dinner at 3, P. M., beside, two or three
wagon’s of Pike’s Peakers, from whom we obtained a generous supply of
fresh bread and another antelope ham, very much to the improvement of
our edible resources. (I may as well explain here that all the emigrants
we met going into the Kansas diggings, had started from the Missouri, on
the north side of the Platte, and had failed to cross at Shinn’s ferry,
sixty-five miles up the latter stream, supposing that they could do so
at Fort Kearney, or some other point below the forks; but, in the
absence of ferries, the high water had headed them off, and forced them
clear up to Laramie whence they were now working southward, having lost
fully two hundred miles by neglecting to cross the Platte where they
might have done so). In all this region, it is a settled maxim, that you
must cross (if you can) a stream directly upon reaching it, if your way
lies across it, never camping before you do so, lest a sudden rise
should obstruct your passage for days. Many have lost a fortnight’s
weary travel by failing to heed this rule in spirit with regard to the
Platte.
We moved again at five, passing over a high ridge, and into a broad
valley, with rounded hills on the west, and a range of such precipitous
clay-rock bluffs as I have tried to describe on the east. These bluffs
were broken through at intervals, and the streams that came down the
hills on the west ran out at the brooks, after traversing the valley for
two or three miles, and flowed away east to join Howard’s Fork and the
South Platte. Our trail here bore considerably west of north, evidently
to reach the mouth of the Cheyenne Pass. We had hoped to make our next
camp at that point; but night fell upon us before reaching it, and we
stopped on a little run where we found water and good grass, close under
the mountains, and in one of the loneliest spots I ever beheld. Not a
tree nor shrub was visible, nor had been for miles; yet, it was not
difficult to gather dry sticks enough to cook our supper, proving what I
have elsewhere observed, that wood was formerly more common in all this
region than now. We had all turned in by nine, and were doing very well,
when a rush, by one of our mules, apprised us that he was loose, having
broken his lariat; he was soon caught and made fast; and we all
addressed ourselves to slumber again. In an hour, however, there was a
fresh alarm, and not without reason; for three of our mules had gone, we
could not tell whither. The first impression was, that a band of
Cheyennes, who were known to be encamped in the mountains very near us,
had, unsuspected by us, been watching our progress from their heights,
and had stolen down under cover of the deep darkness, unfastened, and
started our mules with intent to run them off. This was not an agreeable
view of the case, as we could hope neither to recover nor replace our
faithful animals for at least a week. However, a little watching of the
mule still fast, convinced our conductor that the others had started
back on the road we had traversed, which was a route the Cheyennes were
most unlikely to take, while so near their hiding-places in the
mountains. So two of our men started on the back track, but returned in
an hour unsuccessful. Then the remaining mule was saddled and
bridled—and he had to be thrown down twice before he would submit to the
operation—when our conductor mounted him, expecting to be instantly
thrown by the perverse beast, unused to the saddle, but he was happily
disappointed, and started down the road on a brisk trot. By this time
there was moonlight; and he found all the missing mules a little beyond
the point to which he had previously proceeded on foot, and brought them
back in triumph. It was now break of day, and we resolved to feed and
breakfast for once before starting. We did so, and moved on at six, A.
M., reaching “Camp Walbach,” at the mouth of the Cheyenne Pass, in less
than half an hour.
Let me halt here a moment to illustrate the military and public land
systems of the United States. It last year entered the head of some
genius connected with the War department, that the public interest or
safety required the establishment of a military post at this point, and
one was accordingly planted and maintained there throughout last winter.
Of course, buildings were required to shelter the officers, soldiers,
and animals in that severe climate, and they were accordingly erected;
some of the timber being transported from Laramie—a distance of fully
eighty miles. In the main, however, they are built of pine logs from the
adjacent mountains, the crevices being plastered with mud. In the
spring, the troops were very properly withdrawn, leaving half a dozen
good serviceable houses, and a superior horse-shed and _corral_
untenanted. Hereupon, three lazy louts have squatted on the premises,
intending to start a city there, and to hold and sell the government
structures under a claim of preëmption! I need hardly say that, in the
absence of any United States survey, with the Indian title still
unextinguished, this claim is most impudent; but that will not prevent
their asserting it, and I fear with success. The private interest on one
side will be strong, with none on the other; they can threaten to exert
a political influence, favorably or adversely, as the case may be, to
those whom they find in power; if they are only tenacious enough,
impudent enough, they will probably carry their point. Yet, they might
as fairly preëmpt the White House at Washington, should they ever chance
to find it vacant.
We drove on across a badly-gullied region, wherein are the heads of
Horse Creek—the first stream on our route that runs to the North
Platte—and struck the Chugwater just where it emerged from the
mountains, about eleven, A. M. Thence, we followed down this creek more
than forty miles, crossing it four times, and finally leaving it on our
left to cross the Laramie river, eight or ten miles above this place.
The Chugwater is a rapid, muddy mill-stream, running in a deep, narrow,
tortuous channel, and constantly gouging into one bank or the other,
except where the willows and some other small shrubs oppose the
resistance of their matted roots to the force of the current. The rocky
hills sometimes crowd the stream closely, compelling the road to make a
circuit over the high prairie adjacent to avoid the impracticable cañons
through which the stream frets and foams on its devious way. The “Red
Buttes” are numerous and conspicuous on the upper course of this
creek—the ochry earth or rock which gives them their peculiar color
being accounted a rich iron ore. On the lower bottoms of this stream, we
found far better grass than elsewhere on this journey. But the day was
hot, and our mules suffered so much from musketoes and flies that they
ate fitfully and sparingly where we halted for dinner, and again where
we stopped for the night. We were unable to stop where the grass was
best, because we could not there get our animals down the steep
creek-bank to water.
We made our last camp at a point thirty miles from this post, having
made one hundred and sixty miles in three days’ steady travel, hampered
by the necessity of finding grass and water for our beasts. With grain,
I think they would easily have made sixty-five miles per day. We stopped
beside a stone-and-mud shanty of very rude construction, where a
Frenchman had this spring made a small dam across the Chugwater, so as
to irrigate and fence (by a ditch) a small piece of intervale, on which
he had attempted to grow some grains and vegetables, with rather poor
promise of success. He was absent, and no person or domestic animal to
be seen about his place. The night was uncommonly warm for this
region—the musketoes a good deal more attentive than obliging. We rose
early again, came on ten miles for breakfast, passing almost continually
between two rows of magnificent buttes, often looking in the distance
like more or less ruined castles; one of them reminded me strongly of
the Roman Coliseum. Two miles after breakfast, we crossed the Chugwater
for the last time, and left it running north to the Laramie, while we
struck a more easterly course for this place. Two miles further on, we
came to a most excellent spring—the first I had seen since I emerged
from the Rocky Mountains, by Clear Creek, two weeks before. I had been
poisoned by brook water—often warm and muddy—so long that I could hardly
get enough of this. We now passed over twelve or fifteen miles of high,
rolling, parched, barren prairie, and halted for dinner by a little
brook—the only one that crosses our trail between the Chugwater and
Laramie—after which we drove down opposite this place in an hour, but
were obliged to go two miles below, and pay $2 50 bridge-toll to get
across the Laramie, now very high, and looking decidedly larger at their
junction than the North Platte itself.
I have been tediously minute in my record of this cross-march to reach
the high road to California, because some kind friends have remonstrated
with me against the fancied perils of my journey, as if I were running
recklessly into danger. I believe this portion of my route is at least
as perilous as any other, being the only part not traversed by a
mail-stage or any public conveyance, and lying wholly through a region
in which there are not a dozen white settlers, all told, while it is a
usual battle-ground between hostile tribes of Indians. But we were never
in any shadow of danger; and, though I was compelled to economize steps
in order to complete the healing of my lame leg, I have rarely had a
more pleasant journey. Let any one who wishes an independent and
comfortable ride, just run up to Denver and ask my friend D. B. Wheelock
to harness up his four-mule team to the Rockaway wagon and take him over
to Laramie, and if he does not enjoy a fine prospect, bracing breezes, a
lively pace and excellent company, then he will be less fortunate than I
was.
XVII.
LARAMIE TO SOUTH PASS.
SOUTH PASS, Rocky Mountains, _July 5, 1859_.
I exhausted all the possibilities of obtaining a lodging in Laramie
before applying to the commander of the post; but no one else could (or
would) afford me a shelter on any terms; so I made a virtue of
necessity, and applied to Captain Clark, who at once assigned me a
room—there being few troops there at present—and for the five days I
remained there I slept between a floor and a roof, after five weeks’
experience of the more primitive methods of keeping cold and storm at
bay. I was treated with more than hospitality—with generous kindness—by
Captain Clark, Lieutenants Hascall and Follett, and Dr. Johns—and yet
the long tarry became at length irksome, because I had already lost too
much time, and was most anxious to be moving westward. Finally, the
mail-stage from the East hove in sight on the morning of June 30, but
halted just across Laramie River all day, repairing coach; and it was
eight, P. M., when it started—I alone perched on the summit of its
seventeen mail-bags as passenger—he who had thus far filled that exalted
post kindly giving way for me, and agreeing to take instead the slower
wagon that was to follow next morning. We forded the swollen Laramie two
miles above the fort, in the last vestige of twilight—hod the usual
trouble with mules turning about in mid-stream, tangling up the team,
and threatening to upset the wagon—but overcame it after a while, got
safely out, drove on fifteen miles to Warm Spring—a fountain which
throws out half water enough for a grist-mill, all which is drank up by
the thirsty sands through which it takes its course, before it can reach
the Platte, only three or four miles distant. We camped here till
daylight, then lost two hours in hunting up our mules, which had been
simply tied in pairs, and allowed to go at large in quest of the scanty
grass of that region. They were found at last, and we went on our way
rejoicing.
I shall not weary my readers with a journal of our travels for the last
four days. Hitherto, since I left civilized Kansas, I had traversed
routes either newly opened, or scarcely known to the mass of readers;
but from Laramie I have followed the regular California and Oregon
Overland Trail, already many times described, and by this time familiar
to hundreds of thousands. Suffice it that, for over two hundred miles
from Laramie, it traverses a region substantially described in my notes
of my journey from the buffalo-range to Denver, and from Denver to
Laramie; a region, for the most part, rainless in summer and autumn, yet
on whose soil of more or less sandy clay, lacking support from ridges of
underlying rock, has been more seamed, and gouged, and gullied, and
washed away, by the action of floods and streams than any other on
earth—a region of bluffs and buttes, and deep ravines, and intervales,
and shallow alkaline lakelets, now mainly dried up, and streams running
milky, even when low, with the clay gullied from their banks, and sent
off to render the Missouri a river of mud, and to fertilize the bottoms
of the lower Mississippi. Occasionally, but not so frequently as south
of Laramie, the clay-hills, hardened into rock by some alchemy of
nature, present the perpendicular fronts and ruinous-castle aspects
already described—in a few instances, the scanty creeks which make their
way from the mountains to the North Platte, or the Sweetwater run
through narrow cañons of such rock; but usually each creek has washed
out for itself a wide valley, and the bluffs or buttes, where they
exist, are distant many miles on one side if not on both. In a few
places, the mountains are so near that their thinly scattered, stunted,
scraggy yellow-pines are plainly seen—are even close beside us; but
usually the prospect is composed of rolling prairie very scantily
grassed and often thickly covered for miles on miles by the everlasting
sage-bush of this desolate region. This is not an anomaly, as might be
supposed—the stem lives for years, perhaps centuries, though the shoots
and leaves die[5] every autumn. Another shrub, less common, but which
often thickly covers hundreds of acres, is the grease-wood—a low,
prickly bush, growing in bunches, like the sage-bush, and looking like a
bad imitation of the English privet. Besides these two miserable shrubs,
the dry land, other than the mountains, for hundreds of miles, produces
a very little burnt-up grass in patches, and a good many ill-favored
weeds of no known or presumed value. Of wood, the Platte and its more
easterly tributaries have, at intervals, a shred of the eternal
cotton-wood of the plains, much of it the more scrubby and worthless
species known as bitter cotton-wood, with a very little of the equally
worthless box-elder—and that is all. But, one hundred and forty miles
this side of Laramie, we leave the Platte, which here comes from the
south, and strike nearly forty miles across a barren “divide” to its
tributary, the Sweetwater, which we find just by Independence Rock,
quite a landmark in this desolate region, with several low mountains of
almost naked rock around it, having barely soil enough in their crevices
to support a few dwarfish pines. Five miles above this is the Devil’s
Gate—a passage of the Sweetwater, through a perpendicular cañon, some
twenty-five feet wide, and said to be six hundred feet high—a passage
which must have been cut while the rock was still clay. Here a large
party of Mormons were caught by the snows, while on their way to Salt
Lake, some years since, and compelled to encamp for the winter, so
scantily provided that more than a hundred of them died of hunger and
hardship before spring. Many more must have fallen victims had not a
supply-train from Salt Lake reached them early in the season. And here
is a fountain of cold water—the first that I had seen for more than a
hundred miles, though there is another on the long stretch from the
Platte to the Sweetwater, which is said to be good, but a drove of
cattle were making quite too free with it when we passed. Here the weary
crowds of emigrants to California were to gather yesterday for a
celebration of the “glorious fourth,” and I was warmly invited to stop
and participate, and I now heartily wish I had, since I find that all
our haste was in vain.
Footnote 5:
I guess this is a mistake; farther observation induces me to believe
that the sage-bush is an evergreen.
It was midnight of the 3d, when we reached the mail-route station known
as the Three Crossings, from the fact that so many fordings of the
Sweetwater (here considerably larger than at its mouth, forty miles or
more below) have to be made within the next mile. We had been delayed
two hours by the breaking away of our two lead-mules, in crossing a deep
water-course after dark—or rather by the fruitless efforts of our
conductor to recover them. I had been made sick by the bad water I had
drank from the brooks we crossed during the hot day, and rose in a not
very patriotic, certainly not a joyful mood, unable to eat, but ready to
move on. We started a little after sunrise; and, at the very first
crossing, one of our lead-mules turned about and ran into his mate, whom
he threw down and tangled so that he could not get up; and in a minute
another mule was down, and the two in imminent danger of drowning. They
were soon liberated from the harness, and got up, and we went out; but
just then an emigrant on the bank espied a carpet-bag in the water—mine,
of course—and fished it out. An examination was then had, and showed
that my trunk was missing—the boot of the stage having been opened the
night before, on our arrival at the station, and culpably left
unfastened. We made a hasty search for the estray, but without success,
and, after an hour’s delay, our conductor drove off; leaving my trunk
still in the bottom of Sweetwater, which is said to be ten feet deep
just below our ford. I would rather have sunk a thousand dollars there.
Efforts were directed to be made to fish it out; but my hope of ever
seeing it again is a faint one. We forded Sweetwater six times yesterday
after that, without a single mishap; but I have hardly yet become
reconciled to the loss of my trunk, and, on the whole, my fourth of July
was not a happy one.
Our road left a southerly bend of Sweetwater after dinner, and took its
way over the hills, so as not to strike the stream again till after
dark, at a point three miles from where I now write. We passed, on a
high divide some miles before we were crossing of the Sweetwater, a low
swamp or meadow known as “Ice Springs,” from the fact that ice may be
obtained here at any time by digging down some two or three feet into
the frosty earth. We met several wagon-loads of come-outers from
Mormonism on their way to the states in the course of the afternoon;
likewise, the children of the Arkansas people killed two years since, in
what is known as the mountain-meadows-massacre. We are now nearly at the
summit of the route, with snowy mountains near us in several directions,
and one large snow-bank by the side of a creek we crossed ten miles
back. Yet our yesterday’s road was no rougher, while it was decidedly
better, than that of any former day this side of Laramie, as may be
judged from the fact that, with a late start, we made sixty miles with
one (six mule) team to our heavy-laden wagon. The grass is better for
the last twenty miles than on any twenty miles previously; and the swift
streams that frequently cross our way are cold and sweet. But, unlike
the Platte, the Sweetwater has scarcely a tree or bush growing on its
banks; but up the little stream on which I am writing, on a box in the
mail company’s station-tent, there is glorious water, some grass, and
more wood than I have seen so close together since I emerged from the
gold diggings on Vasquer’s Fork, five hundred miles away. A snow-bank,
forty rods long and several feet deep, lies just across the brook; the
wind blows cold at night; and we had a rain-squall—just rain enough to
lay the dust—yesterday afternoon. The mail-agent whom we met here has
orders not to run into Salt Lake ahead of time; so he keeps us over here
to-day, and will then take six days to reach Salt Lake, which we might
reach in four. I am but a passenger, and must study patience.
A word on the Salt Lake mail. Of the seventeen bags on which I have
ridden for the last four days and better, at least sixteen are filled
with large bound books, mainly Patent Office Reports, I judge—but all of
them undoubtedly works ordered printed at the public cost—_your_ cost,
reader!—by Congress, and now on their way to certain favored Mormons,
franked (by proxy) “Pub. Doc. _Free_, J. M. Bernhisel, M. C.” I do not
blame Mr. B. for clutching his share of this public plunder, and
distributing it so as to increase his own popularity and importance; but
I do protest against this business of printing books by wholesale at the
cost of the whole people for free distribution to a part only. It is
every way wrong and pernicious. Of the one hundred and ninety thousand
dollars per annum paid for carrying the Salt Lake mail, nine-tenths is
absorbed in the cost of carrying these franked documents to people who
contribute little or nothing to the support of the government in any
way. Is this fair? Each Patent Office Report will have cost the treasury
four or five dollars by the time it reaches its destination, and will
not be valued by the receiver at twenty-five cents. Why should this
business go on? Why not “reform it altogether?” Let Congress print
whatever documents are needed for its own information, and leave the
people to choose and buy for themselves. I have spent four days and five
nights in close contact with the sharp edges of Mr. Bernhisel’s “Pub.
Doc.”—have done my very utmost to make them present a smooth, or at
least endurable surface; and I am sure there is no slumber to be
extracted therefrom unless by reading them—a desperate resort, which no
rational person would recommend. For all practical purposes, they might
as well—now that the printer has been paid for them—be where I heartily
wish they were—in the bottom of the sea.
XVII.
SOUTH PASS TO BRIDGER.
BIG SANDY, Oregon, _July 6, 1859_.
I wrote last from the Mail Company’s station-tent in “Quaking Asp
Cañon,” at the east end of the South Pass, three miles off the direct
and well-beaten road from the Missouri to Salt Lake, and so to
California, which was formerly the road to Oregon as well. But Col.
Lander, at the head of a U. S. exploring and pioneer party, has just
marked and nearly opened a new road through the Cañon aforesaid, which
makes a Northern cut-off, and strikes the old Oregon Trail some fourteen
miles south of Fort Hall, saving sixty miles on the journey to Oregon,
and striking through to California on a northerly route, which I think
passes to the north of Honey Lake, and thence over the Sierra down one
of the forks of the Yuba. I cannot, of course, say that this is better
than the old route, but it can hardly be more destitute of grass; while
the naked fact that it divides the travel, affords cheering hope of a
mitigation of the sufferings and hardships of the long journey. I missed
seeing Col. Lander, to my regret; but I am sure he is doing a good work,
for which thousands will have reason to bless him. At all events, a
great majority of the California, with all the Oregon emigration, are
turning off on the new route, and I pray that they may find on it food
for their weary, famished cattle, and a safe journey to their chosen
homes.
Though the elevation of the Pass is nearly 8,000 feet above the ocean
level, I never endured heat exceeding that of yesterday in and about the
station-tent. The sun rose clear, as it almost always does here in
Summer, soon dispelling the chill which attends every night in this
region; and by nine o’clock the heat was most intense. But the afternoon
brought clouds, a wind and a petty rain-squall, and the following night
was cold enough to still any mosquitoes but those of the Rocky
Mountains. I suspect these would sing and bite even with the mercury at
zero.
Toward evening, I climbed the hill on the east of the Cañon, and
obtained from its summit a wide prospect, but how desolate! These hills
are of volcanic formation, a kind of coarse slate, the strata upheaved
almost perpendicularly, the surface shattered and shingly, with veins of
hard quartz running across them. There is scarcely a bushel of soil to
each square rod, of course no grass, and little vegetation of any kind.
To the north, say ten to twenty miles away, is a snow-streaked range of
the Rocky Mountains; to the south, some miles across the Sweetwater, are
lower and less barren hills, with some snow-banks and some
wood—quaking-asp and yellow-pine—on their northern slopes. The
Sweetwater heads among the mountains to the north and north-west. There
is a little well-gnawed grass on its immediate banks and on those of its
tributaries—on the high rolling land which fills all beside of the wide
space between the mountains north and those south, there is not a
mule-feed to each acre. Some grease-wood at intervals, the eternal
sage-bush, and a few weeds, with the quaking-asp and yellow-pine
aforesaid, and a thick tangle of bitter cotton-wood (which is a bad
caricature of our swamp-alder) thatching portions of a few of the
smaller streams, comprise the entire vegetation of this forlorn region.
We started at seven this morning, came down to the old Salt Lake,
Oregon, and California Trail at the Sweetwater, crossed and left that
creek finally, and traversed a slightly rolling country for seven miles
to the “Twin Buttes,” two low, clay-topped mounds which mark the point
from which the water runs easterly to the Gulf of Mexico, and westerly
to the Pacific. If any one has pictured to himself the South Pass as
threading some narrow, winding, difficult, rocky mountain-gorge, he is
grievously mistaken. The trail through the South Pass is the best part
of the route from Atchison to California; the clay has here been almost
wholly washed away and carried off, so that the road passes over a
coarse, heavy, gravelly sand, usually as compact and smooth as the best
illustrations of the genius of MacAdam. I never before traversed
forty-five miles of purely natural road so faultless as that through the
South Pass which I have traveled to-day. But this tract would be good
for roads, as it seems absolutely good for nothing else. The natural
obstacles to constructing a railroad through this region are not
comparable to those overcome in the construction of the Camden and
Amboy.
Passing the Twin Buttes—the distance between the mountains on the north
and the hills on the south being not less than thirty miles, and
thenceforth westward rapidly widening—we ran down the side of a dry,
shallow water-course some five miles, to a wet, springy marsh or morass
of fifteen or twenty acres, covered with poor, coarse grass, in which
are found the so-called “Pacific Springs.” The water is clear and cold,
but bad. Perhaps the number of dead cattle of which the skeletons dot
the marsh, made it so distasteful to me. At all events, I could not
drink it. This bog is long and narrow; and from its western end issues a
petty brook, which takes its way south-westwardly to the Sandy, Green
River, the Colorado and the Gulf of California. Hence, toward the south
and west, no hills are visible—nothing but a sandy, barren plain, mainly
covered with the miserable sage-bush.
Twelve miles further on, we crossed _Dry_ Sandy—not quite dry at this
point, but its thirsty sands would surely drink the last of it a mile or
so further south. Five miles beyond this, the old and well-beaten Oregon
Trail strikes off to the north-west, while our road bends to the
south-west. We are now out of the South Pass, which many have traversed
unconsciously, and gone on wondering and inquiring when they should
reach it. Seven miles further brought us to _Little_ Sandy, and eight
more to _Big_ Sandy, whereon is the station at which, at four P. M. we
(by order), stopped for the night. All these creeks appear to rise in
the high mountains many miles north of us, and to run off with
constantly diminishing volume, to join the Colorado at the south.
Neither has a tree on its banks that I have seen—only a few low willow
bushes at long intervals—though I hear that some cotton-wood is found on
this creek ten miles above. Each has a “bottom” or intervale of perhaps
four rods in average width, in which a little grass is found, but next
to none on the high-sandy plains that separate them. Drouth and
sterility reign here without rival.
* * * * *
FORT BRIDGER, Utah, _July 8, 1859_.
We crossed Big Sandy twice before quitting it—once just at the station
where the above was written, and again eighteen miles further on. Twelve
miles more brought us to Green River—a stream here perhaps as large as
the Mohawk at Schenectady or the Hudson at Waterford. It winds with a
rapid, muddy current through a deep, narrow valley, much of it sandy and
barren, but the residue producing some grass with a few large
cotton-woods at intervals, and some worthless bushes. There are three
rope ferries within a short distance, and two or three trading-posts,
somewhat frequented by Indians of the Snake tribe. Eighteen miles more
of perfect desolation brought us to the next mail company’s station on
Black’s Fork, at the junction of Ham’s Fork, two-large mill-streams that
rise in the mountains south and west of this point, and run together
into Green River. They have scarcely any timber on their banks, but a
sufficiency of bushes—bitter cotton-wood, willow, choke-cherry, and some
others new to me—with more grass than I have found this side of the
South Pass. On these streams live several old mountaineers, who have
large herds of cattle which they are rapidly increasing by a lucrative
traffic with the emigrants, who are compelled to exchange their tired,
gaunt oxen and steers for fresh ones on almost any terms. R. D., whose
tent we passed last evening, is said to have six or eight hundred head;
and, knowing the country perfectly, finds no difficulty in keeping them
through summer and winter by frequently shifting them from place to
place over a circuit of thirty or forty miles. J. R., who has been here
some twenty-odd years, began with little or nothing, and has quietly
accumulated some fifty horses, three or four hundred head of neat
cattle, three squaws, and any number of half-breed children. He is said
to be worth seventy-five thousand dollars, though he has not even a
garden, has probably not tasted an apple nor a peach these ten years,
and lives in a tent which would be dear at fifty dollars. I instance
this gentleman’s way of life not by any means to commend it, but to
illustrate the habits of a class. White men with two or three squaws
each are quite common throughout this region, and young and relatively
comely Indian girls are bought from their fathers by white men as
regularly and openly as Circassians at Constantinople. The usual range
of prices is from forty to eighty dollars—about that of Indian horses. I
hear it stated that, though all other trade may be dull, that in young
squaws is always brisk on Green River and the North Platte. That women
so purchased should be discarded or traded off, as satiety or avarice
may suggest, and that they should desert or deceive their purchasers on
the slightest temptation, can surprise no one. I met an Irishman on Big
Sandy whose squaw had recently gone off with an Indian admirer, leaving
him two clever, bright, half-breed children of seven and five years. I
trust that plank in the republican national platform, which affirms the
right and duty of Congressional prohibition, not only of slavery in the
territories but of polygamy also, is destined to be speedily embodied in
a law.
We passed yesterday the two places at which a body of Mormons late in
1857, surprised and burned the supply-trains following in the rear of
the federal troops sent against them. The wagons were burned in corral,
and the place where each stood is still distinctly marked on the ground.
It seems incredible, yet I am assured it is undoubtedly true, that none
of the military officers who were severally dispatched from Kansas, late
that season on the road to Salt Lake without a commander and with no
definite instructions, was directed to afford any protection or give any
feed to these important towns. It is lamentable that presidents and
secretaries of war are not subject to court-martials.
We have for the last two days been passing scores of good log or
ox-chains—in one instance, a hundred feet together—which, having been
thrown away by California emigrants to lighten the loads of their
famished, failing cattle, have lain in the road for months, if not
years, passed and noted by thousands, but by none thought worth picking
up. One would suppose that the traders, the herdsmen, the Indians, or
some other of the residents of this region, would deem these chains
worth having, but they do not. I had already become accustomed to the
sight of wagon-tire, wagon-boxes, etc., rejected and spurned in this
way; but good, new chains thus begging for owners, I have only noted
this side of the South Pass. They are said to be still more abundant
further on.
This morning, I was agreeably surprised by a greeting from three
acquaintances I made in Denver, who invited me to share their outfit and
journey to California, who left Denver the morning before I did, and
beside whom I camped my first night on the road to Laramie. They are
just through the Cherokee Trail, entering the mountains at
Cache-la-Poudre and crossing Green River by a ferry some thirty miles
below the point at which I did. They were detained one day making a raft
on which to ferry their wagon over the North Platte, and found some
rough places in the mountains; at one of which they were obliged to
unhitch their horses and let their wagon down a steep pitch by ropes.
They found the water of Bitter Creek—along which lies their road for a
hundred miles or so—bitter indeed; and in some places grass was
deficient; but their horses look nearly as well as when they left
Denver. Their route has of course been some two hundred and fifty miles
shorter than mine, and they will reach Salt Lake scarcely a day behind
me. I wish I had been able to accompany them on their rugged and
little-traveled route.
On the other side of the Pass, we had mainly clear, hot days; on this
side, they are cloudy and cool. We had a little shower of rain with
abundance of wind night before last, another shower last night, and more
rain is now threatened. Yet all old residents assure me that rain in
Summer is very rare throughout this region.
We stop to-night at a point only one hundred miles from Salt Lake, with
two rugged mountains to cross, so that we are not to reach that
stopping-place till Monday.
XIX.
FROM BRIDGER TO SALT LAKE.
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, _July 11, 1859_.
Fort Bridger, whence my last was sent, may be regarded as the terminus
in this direction of the Great American Desert. Not that the intervening
country is fertile or productive, for it is neither; but at Bridger its
character visibly changes. The hills we here approach are thinly covered
with a straggling growth of low, scraggy cedar; the sage-bush continues
even into this valley, but it is no longer universal and almost alone;
grass is more frequent and far more abundant; Black’s Fork, which, a few
miles below, runs whitish with the clay-wash of the desert, is here a
clear, sparkling mountain torrent, divided into half a dozen streams by
the flat, pebbly islets on which the little village—or rather post—is
located; while, twelve miles up its course, an improvement of 500 acres,
begun some years since by the Mormons, has this season been put under
cultivation, with flattering prospects. Oats, barley, potatoes, peas,
etc., are the crops sought; and the enterprising growers have contracts
for the supply of Fort Bridger at prices which will insure them a
liberal return in case they realize even a moderate yield. This may seem
a small matter; but I doubt that there are, in all, 500 acres more under
cultivation in the 250,000 square miles or more lying between the forks
of the Platte on the east, the Salt Lake Basin on the west, the
settlements of New Mexico on the south, and the Yellow Stone on the
north. Yet in this radius are included several military posts at which
every bushel of grain consumed costs an average of $5, while potatoes
and other edible roots would command nearly as good prices, could they
be had. There are herdsmen at intervals throughout all this region who
have each their hundreds of heads of cattle, but who hardly know the
taste of a potato or turnip, who have never planted nor sowed an acre,
and never contemplated the possibility of growing an apple or cherry,
though they expect to live and die in this region. I trust, therefore,
that the Fort Bridger enterprise will succeed, and that it will incite
to like experiments in the vicinity of each wilderness post. The present
enormous cost of our military service in this immense desert may thus be
slightly compensated by proving the great desert not absolutely
worthless, and creating a basis of civilization for its rude, nomadic,
lawless, but hardy, bold, and energetic pioneers.
From Fort Bridger (named after an Indian trader who first settled here;
then settled as an outpost and relief-station by the Mormons when they
began to people this valley, but abandoned by them on the approach, late
in ’57, of the army, by which it has since been held) the Salt Lake
trail rises over a high, broad ridge, then descends a very steep, rocky,
difficult hill to Big Muddy, a branch of Black’s Fork, where—12 miles
from Bridger—is the Mail Company’s station, at which we had expected to
spend the night. But the next drive is 60 miles, and our new conductor
wisely decided to cut a piece off of it that evening, as the road at the
other end was hazardous in a dark night. So we moved on a little after
sundown, rising over another broad ridge, and, after narrowly escaping
an upset in a gully dug in the trail by that day’s violent shower,
camped 15 miles on, a little after 11 P. M. The sky was densely clouded;
the moon nearly down; it was raining a little and blowing more, as we
lay down to rest, most of us under the sullen sky. An hour or more
thereafter, our mules (which were simply tied in pairs by long ropes and
thus turned out to graze) were somehow disturbed, and our stage-men
challenged and stood ready to repel the supposed depredator. He proved,
however, to be a friend, traveling on mule-back from Bridger to this
place, who had wandered off the trail in the deep darkness, and perhaps
been carried among our animals by the fondness of his own for congenial
society; so all was soon right, and the new comer unsaddled, pulled off
his blankets, and was soon couched among us. At daylight we were all
astir, and drove down to Bear River, only three or four miles distant,
for breakfast.
We halted before crossing, beside what is here called a grocery, the
only other structure on that side of the river being a blacksmith’s shop
(consisting, I believe, of a bellows and anvil under the open sky), to
which some part of our rigging was sent for repair, while we prepared
and ate breakfast. There were two or three men sleeping in wet blankets
on the grass, who rose and made a fire on our appearance. The grocery
was irregularly constructed of boxes which had once contained goods,
but, having fulfilled that end, were thus made useful afresh. I suppose
it was six feet high, and five by eight in diameter, though no two of
its sides were of the same height. An old tent-cloth for covering
completed the edifice, from which we obtained sardines, canned lobster,
and prepared coffee which was said to contain sugar and cream, but which
was voted by our drinkers a swindling humbug. I believe these articles
exhausted the capabilities of the concern; but, as we had bread, we
needed no more. Some of our party thought otherwise, however; they
called for whisky or some kindred beverage, and were indignantly
disgusted at its non-production. They had become inured to groceries
containing nothing that could by possibility be eaten; but a grocery
devoid of some kind of “rot,” as the fiery beverage was currently
designated, was to them a novel and most distasteful experience.
However, a man was at once dispatched across the creek to a similar
establishment, but more happily furnished, whence he soon returned with
the indispensable fluid (price $3 for a flask containing perhaps a pint
and a half of some diabolic alcoholic concoction, wherein the small
modicum of genuine whisky had taken to itself seven other devils worse
than the first), and our breakfast was finished to general satisfaction.
A word here on the liquor traffic throughout this region. A mercantile
firm in this city, in order to close out promptly its extra stock of
liquors, offers to sell whisky at the extraordinarily low price of $3 50
per gallon. I believe the common price from Laramie westward to the
Sierra Nevada is $8 per gallon; but it is usually sold to consumers by
the bottle, holding less than a quart, for which the charge is $2 up to
$3 50, but seldom below $2 50. And such liquor! True, I have not tasted
it; but the smell I could not escape; and I am sure a more wholesome
potable might be compounded of spirits of turpentine, aqua fortis, and
steeped tobacco. Its look alone would condemn it—soapy, ropy, turbid, it
is within bounds to say that every pint of it contains as much deadly
poison as a gallon of pure whisky. And yet fully half the earnings of
the working men (not including the Mormons, of whom I have yet seen
little) of this whole region are fooled away on this abominable
witch-broth and its foster-brother tobacco, for which they pay $1 to 2
50 per pound! The log-tavern-keeper at Weber, of whom our mail-boys
bought their next supply of “rot,” apologetically observed, “There a’n’t
nothing bad about this whisky; the only fault is, it isn’t good.” I back
that last assertion with my whole heart.
Fording Bear River—here a swift, rocky-bottomed creek, now perhaps forty
yards wide, but hardly three feet deep—we rose gradually through a
grassy valley, partially inclosed by high, perpendicular stone Buttes,
especially on the right. The stone (evidently once clay) outposts of one
of the Buttes are known as “The Needles.” We thence descended a long,
steep hill into the valley of “Lost Creek,”—_why_ “lost,” I could not
divine, as the creek is plainly there—a fair trout-brook, running
through a grassy meadow, between high hills, over which we made our way
into the head of “Echo Cañon,” down which we jogged some twenty miles to
Weber River.
This cañon reminded me afresh that evil and good are strongly interwoven
in our early lot. Throughout the desolate region which stretches from
the Sweetwater nearly or quite to Bridger, we had in the main the best
natural road I ever traveled—dusty, indeed, and, in places, abrupt and
rough, but equal in the average to the carefully-made and
annually-repaired roads of New England. But in this fairly-grassed
ravine, hemmed in by steep, picturesque bluffs, with springs issuing
from their bases, and gradually gathering into a trout-brook as we
neared the Weber, we found the “going decidedly bad,” and realized that
in the dark it could not but be dangerous. For the brook, with its
welcome fringe of yellow, choke-cherry, service-berry, and other shrubs,
continually zigzagged from side to side of the cañon, compelling us to
descend and ascend its precipitous banks, and cross its sometimes miry
bed, often with a smart chance of breaking an axle, or upsetting.
We stopped to feed and dine at the site of “General Well’s Camp” during
the Mormon War of 1857–8, and passed, ten miles below, the
fortifications constructed under his orders in that famous campaign.
They seem childish affairs, more suited to the genius of Chinese than of
civilized warfare. I cannot believe that they would have stopped the
Federal troops, if even tolerably led, for more than an hour.
We reached our next station on the Weber, a little after 5, P. M., and
did not leave till after an early breakfast next (yesterday) morning.
The Weber is, perhaps, a little larger than the Bear, and runs through a
deep, narrow, rugged valley, with no cultivation so far as we saw it.
Two “groceries,” a blacksmith’s shop, and the mail-station, are all the
habitations we passed in following down it some four or five miles to
the shaky pole-bridge, on which we crossed, though it is usually
fordable. We soon after struck off up a rather steep, grassy
water-course which we followed to its head, and thence took over a
“divide” to the head of another such, on which our road wound down to
“East Cañon Creek,” a fair, rapid trout-brook, running through a deep,
narrow ravine, up which we twisted, crossing and recrossing the swift
stream, until we left it, greatly diminished in volume, after tracking
it through a mile or so of low, swampy timber, and frequent mud-holes,
and turned up a little runnel that came feebly brawling down the side of
a mountain. The trail ran for a considerable distance exactly in the bed
of this petty-brooklet—said bed consisting wholly of round, water-worn
granite bowlders, of all sizes, from that of a pigeon’s egg up to that
of a potash-kettle; when the ravine widened a little, and the trail
wound from side to side of the water-course as chances for a foothold
were proffered by one or the other. The bottom of this ravine was poorly
timbered with quaking-asp, and balsam-fir, with some service-berry,
choke-cherry, mountain currant, and other bushes; the whole ascent is
four miles, not very steep, except for the last half-mile; but the trail
is so bad, that it is a good two hours’ work to reach the summit. But,
that summit gained, we stand in a broad, open, level space on the top of
the Wahsatch range, with the Uintah and Bear Mountains on either hand,
forming a perfect chaos of wild, barren peaks, some of them snowy,
between which we have a glance at a part of the Salt Lake Valley, some
thirty miles distant, though the city, much nearer, is hidden by
intervening heights, and the lake is likewise concealed further to the
right. The descent toward the valley is steeper and shorter than the
ascent from the side of Bear River—the first half-mile so fearfully
steep, that I judge few passengers ever rode down it, though
carriage-wheels are uniformly chained here. But, though the southern
face of these mountains is covered by a far more luxuriant shrubbery
than the northern, among which oaks and maples soon make their
appearance for the first time in many a weary hundred miles. None of
these seem ever to grow into trees; in fact, I saw none over six feet
high. Some quaking-asps, from ten to twenty-five feet high, the largest
hardly more than six inches through, cover patches of these precipitous
mountain-sides, down which, and over the low intervening mountain, they
are toilsomely dragged fifteen or twenty miles to serve as fuel in this
city, where even such poor trash sells for fifteen to twenty dollars per
cord. The scarcity and wretchedness of the timber—(I have not seen the
raw material for a decent ax-helve growing in all my last thousand miles
of travel)—are the great discouragement and drawback with regard to all
this region. The parched sandy clay, or clayey sand of the plains
disappeared many miles back; there has been rich, black soil, at least
in the valleys, ever since we crossed Weber River; but the timber is
still scarce, small, and poor, in the ravines, while ninety-nine
hundredths of the surface of the mountains is utterly bare of it. In the
absence of coal, how can a region so unblest ever be thickly settled,
and profitably cultivated?
The descent of the mountain on this side is but two miles in length,
with the mail company’s station at the bottom. Here (thirteen miles from
the city, twenty-seven from Bear River) we had expected to stop for the
night; but our new conductor, seeing that there were still two or three
hours of good daylight, resolved to come on. So, with fresh teams, we
soon crossed the “little mountain”—steep, but hardly a mile in ascent,
and but half a mile in immediate descent—and ran rapidly down some ten
miles through the narrow ravine known as “Emigration Cañon,” where the
road, though much traversed by Mormons as well as emigrants and
merchant-trains, is utterly abominable; and, passing over but two or
three miles of intervening plain, were in this city just as twilight was
deepening into night.
* * * * *
Salt Lake City wears a pleasant aspect to the emigrant or traveler,
weary, dusty, and browned with a thousand miles of jolting, fording,
camping, through the scorched and naked American Desert. It is located
mainly on the bench of hard gravel that slopes southward from the foot
of the mountains toward the lake valley; the houses—generally small and
of one story—are all built of adobe (sun-hardened brick), and have a
neat and quiet look; while the uniform breadth of the streets (eight
rods) and the “magnificent distances” usually preserved by the buildings
(each block containing ten acres, divided into eight lots, giving a
quarter of an acre for buildings and an acre for garden, fruit, etc., to
each householder), make up an _ensemble_ seldom equaled. Then the rills
of bright, sparkling, leaping water which, diverted from the streams
issuing from several adjacent mountain cañons, flow through each street
and are conducted at will into every garden, diffuse an air of freshness
and coolness which none can fail to enjoy, but which only a traveler in
summer across the Plains can fully appreciate. On a single business
street, the post-office, principal stores, etc., are set pretty near
each other, though not so close as in other cities; everywhere else, I
believe, the original plan of the city has been wisely and happily
preserved. Southward from the city, the soil is softer and richer, and
there are farms of (I judge) ten to forty or sixty acres; but I am told
that the lowest portion of the valley, nearly on a level with the lake,
is so impregnated with salt, soda, etc., as to yield but a grudging
return for the husbandman’s labor. I believe, however, that even this
region is available as a stock-range—thousands on thousands of cattle,
mainly owned in the city, being pastured here in winter as well as
summer, and said to do well in all seasons. For, though snow is never
absent from the mountain-chains which shut in this valley, it seldom
lies long in the valley itself.
The pass over the Wahsatch is, if I mistake not, eight thousand three
hundred feet above the sea level; this valley about four thousand nine
hundred. The atmosphere is so pure that the mountains across the valley
to the south seem but ten or fifteen miles off; they are really from
twenty to thirty. The lake is some twenty miles westward; but we see
only the rugged mountain known as “Antelope Island” which rises in its
center, and seems to bound the valley in that direction. Both the lake
and valley wind away to the north-west for a distance of some ninety
miles—the lake receiving the waters of Weber and Bear Rivers behind the
mountains in that direction. And then there are other valleys like this,
nested among the mountains south and west to the very base of the Sierra
Nevada. So there will be room enough here for all this strange people
for many years.
But of the Mormons and Mormonism, I propose to speak only after studying
them; to which end I remain here several days longer.
XXI.
TWO HOURS WITH BRIGHAM YOUNG.
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, _July 13, 1859_.
My friend Dr. Bernhisel, late delegate in Congress, took me this
afternoon, by appointment, to meet Brigham Young, President of the
Mormon Church, who had expressed a willingness to receive me at two P.
M. We were very cordially welcomed at the door by the president, who led
us into the second-story parlor of the largest of his houses (he has
three), where I was introduced to Heber C. Kimball, General Wells,
General Ferguson, Albert Carrington, Elias Smith, and several other
leading men in the church, with two full-grown sons of the president.
After some unimportant conversation on general topics, I stated that I
had come in quest of fuller knowledge respecting the doctrines and
polity of the Mormon Church, and would like to ask some questions
bearing directly on these, if there were no objection. President Young
avowing his willingness to respond to all pertinent inquiries, the
conversation proceeded substantially as follows:
_H. G._—Am I to regard Mormonism (so-called) as a new religion, or as
simply a new development of Christianity?
_B. Y._—We hold that there can be no true Christian Church without a
priesthood directly commissioned by, and in immediate communication with
the Son of God and Saviour of mankind. Such a church is that of the
Latter-Day Saints, called by their enemies Mormons; we know no other
that even pretends to have present and direct revelations of God’s will.
_H. G._—Then I am to understand that you regard all other churches
professing to be christian as the Church of Rome regards all churches
not in communion with itself—as schismatic, heretical, and out of the
way of salvation?
_B. Y._—Yes, substantially.
_H. G._—Apart from this, in what respect do your doctrines differ
essentially from those of our Orthodox Protestant Churches—the Baptist
or Methodist, for example?
_B. Y._—We hold the doctrines of christianity, as revealed in the Old
and New Testaments—also in the Book of Mormon, which teaches the same
cardinal truths and those only.
_H. G._—Do you believe in the doctrine of the Trinity?
_B. Y._—We do; but not exactly as it is held by other churches. We
believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as equal, but not
identical—not as one person [being].[6] We believe in all the bible
teaches on this subject.
Footnote 6:
I am quite sure that President Young used here the word “person” as I
have it; but I am not aware that christians of any denomination do
regard the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as one person.
_H. G._—Do you believe in a personal devil—a distinct, conscious,
spiritual being, whose nature and acts are essentially malignant and
evil?
_B. Y._—We do.
_H. G._—Do you hold the doctrine of eternal punishment?
_B. Y._—We do; though perhaps not exactly as other churches do. We
believe it as the bible teaches it.
_H. G._—I understand that you regard baptism by immersion as essential?
_B. Y._—We do.
_H. G._—Do you practice infant baptism?
_B. Y._—No.
_H. G._—Do you make removal to these valleys obligatory on your
converts?
_B. Y._—They would consider themselves greatly aggrieved if they were
not invited hither. We hold to such a gathering together of God’s
people, as the bible foretells, and that this is the place, and now is
the time appointed for its consummation.
_H. G._—The predictions to which you refer, have usually, I think, been
understood to indicate Jerusalem (or Judea) as the place of such
gathering.
_B. Y._—Yes, for the Jews—not for others.
_H. G._—What is the position of your church with respect to slavery?
_B. Y._—We consider it of divine institution, and not to be abolished
until the curse pronounced on Ham shall have been removed from his
descendants.
_H. G._—Are any slaves now held in this territory?
_B. Y._—There are.
_H. G._—Do your territorial laws uphold slavery?
_B. Y._—Those laws are printed—you can read for yourself. If slaves are
brought here by those who owned them in the states, we do not favor
their escape from the service of those owners.
_H. G._—Am I to infer that Utah, if admitted as a member of the Federal
Union, will be a slave state?
_H. G._—No; she will be a free-state. Slavery here would prove useless
and unprofitable. I regard it generally as a curse to the masters. I
myself hire many laborers, and pay them fair wages; I could not afford
to own them. I can do better than subject myself to an obligation to
feed and clothe their families, to provide and care for them in sickness
and health. Utah is not adapted to slave-labor.
_H. G._—Let me now be enlightened with regard more especially to your
church polity: I understand that you require each member to pay over
one-tenth of all he produces or earns to the church.
_B. Y._—That is a requirement of our faith. There is no compulsion as to
the payment. Each member acts in the premises according to his pleasure,
under the dictates of his own conscience.
_H. G._—What is done with the proceeds of this tithing?
_B. Y._—Part of it is devoted to building temples, and other places of
worship; part to helping the poor and needy converts on their way to
this country; and the largest portion to the support of the poor among
the saints.
_H. G._—Is none of it paid to bishops, and other dignitaries of the
church?
_B. Y._—Not one penny. No bishop, no elder, no deacon, nor other church
officer, receives any compensation for his official services. A bishop
is often required to put his hand into his own pocket, and provide
therefrom for the poor of his charge; but he never receives anything for
his services.
_H. G._—How, then, do your ministers live?
_B. Y._—By the labor of their own hands, like the first apostles. Every
bishop, every elder, may be daily seen at work in the field or the shop,
like his neighbors; every minister of the church has his proper calling,
by which he earns the bread of his family; he who cannot, or will not do
the church’s work for nothing is not wanted in her service; even our
lawyers (pointing to General Ferguson and another present, who are the
regular lawyers of the church), are paid nothing for their services; I
am the only person in the church who has not a regular calling apart
from the church’s service, and I never received one farthing from her
treasury; if I obtain anything from the tithing-house, I am charged
with, and pay for it, just as any one else would; the clerks in the
tithing-store are paid like other clerks; but no one is ever paid for
any service pertaining to the ministry. We think a man who cannot make
his living aside from the ministry of Christ unsuited to that office. I
am called rich, and consider myself worth two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars; but no dollar of it was ever paid me by the church, nor for any
service as a minister of the everlasting Gospel. I lost nearly all I had
when we were broken up in Missouri, and driven from that state. I was
nearly stripped again, when Joseph Smith was murdered, and we were
driven from Illinois; but nothing was ever made up to me by the church,
nor by any one. I believe I know how to acquire property, and how to
take care of it.
_H. G._—Can you give me any rational explanation of the aversion and
hatred with which your people are generally regarded by those among whom
they have lived and with whom they have been brought directly in
contact?
_B. Y._—No other explanation than is afforded by the crucifixion of
Christ and the kindred treatment of God’s ministers, prophets and
saints, in all ages.
_H. G._—I know that a new sect is always decried and traduced—that it is
hardly ever deemed respectable to belong to one—that the Baptists,
Quakers, Methodists, Universalists, etc., have each in their turn been
regarded in the infancy of their sect as the offscouring of the earth;
yet I cannot remember that either of them were ever generally
represented and regarded by the older sects of their early days as
thieves, robbers, murderers.
_B. Y._—If you will consult the cotemporary Jewish account of the life
and acts of Jesus Christ, you will find that he and his disciples were
accused of every abominable deed and purpose—robbery and murder
included. Such a work is still extant, and may be found by those who
seek it.
_H. G._—What do you say of the so-called Danites, or Destroying Angels,
belonging to your church?
_B. Y._—What do _you_ say? I know of no such band, no such persons or
organization. I hear of them only in the slanders of our enemies.
_H. G._—With regard, then, to the grave question on which your doctrines
and practices are avowedly at war with those of the Christian world—that
of a plurality of wives—is the system of your church acceptable to the
majority of its women?
_B. Y._—They could not be more averse to it than I was when it was first
revealed to us as the Divine will. I think they generally accept it, as
I do, as the will of God.
_H. G._—How general is polygamy among you?
_B. Y._—I could not say. Some of those present (heads of the church)
have each but one wife; others have more: each determines what is his
individual duty.
_H. G._—What is the largest number of wives belonging to any one man?
_B. Y._—I have fifteen; I know no one who has more; but some of those
sealed to me are old ladies whom I regard rather as mothers than wives,
but whom I have taken home to cherish and support.
_H. G._—Does not the Apostle Paul say that a bishop should be “the
husband of one wife?”
_B. Y._—So we hold. We do not regard any but a married man as fitted for
the office of bishop. But the apostle does not forbid a bishop having
more wives than one.
_H. G._—Does not Christ say that he who puts away his wife, or marries
one whom another has put away, commits adultery!
_B. Y._—Yes; and I hold that no man should ever put away his wife except
for adultery—not always even for that. Such is _my_ individual view of
the matter. I do not say that wives have never been put away in our
church, but that I do not approve of the practice.
_H. G._—How do you regard what is commonly termed the Christian Sabbath?
_B. Y._—As a divinely appointed day of rest. We enjoin all to rest from
secular labor on that day. We would have no man enslaved to the Sabbath,
but we enjoin all to respect and enjoy it.
* * * * *
Such is, as nearly as I can recollect, the substance of nearly two
hours’ conversation, wherein much was said incidentally that would not
be worth reporting, even if I could remember and reproduce it, and
wherein others bore a part; but as President Young is the first minister
of the Mormon church, and bore the principal part in the conversation, I
have reported his answers alone to my questions and observations. The
others appeared uniformly to defer to his views, and to acquiesce fully
in his responses and explanations. He spoke readily, not always with
grammatical accuracy, but with no appearance of hesitation or reserve,
and with no apparent desire to conceal anything, nor did he repel any of
my questions as impertinent. He was very plainly dressed in thin summer
clothing, and with no air of sanctimony or fanaticism. In appearance, he
is a portly, frank, good-natured, rather thick-set man of fifty-five,
seeming to enjoy life, and to be in no particular hurry to get to
heaven. His associates are plain men, evidently born and reared to a
life of labor, and looking as little like crafty hypocrites or swindlers
as any body of men I ever met. The absence of cant or snuffle from their
manner was marked and general; yet, I think I may fairly say that their
Mormonism has not impoverished them—that they were generally poor men
when they embraced it, and are now in very comfortable circumstances—as
men averaging three or four wives apiece certainly need to be.
If I hazard any criticisms on Mormonism generally, I reserve them for a
separate letter, being determined to make this a fair and full exposé of
the doctrine and polity, in the very words of its prophet, so far as I
can recall them. I do not believe President Young himself could present
them in terms calculated to render them less obnoxious to the Gentile
world than the above. But I have a right to add here, because I said it
to the assembled chiefs at the close of the above colloquy, that the
degradation (or, if you please, the restriction) of woman to the single
office of child-bearing and its accessories, is an inevitable
consequence of the system here paramount. I have not observed a sign in
the streets, an advertisement in the journals, of this Mormon
metropolis, whereby a woman proposes to do anything whatever. No Mormon
has ever cited to me his wife’s or any woman’s opinion on any subject;
no Mormon woman has been introduced or has spoken to me; and, though I
have been asked to visit Mormons in their houses, no one has spoken of
his wife (or wives) desiring to see me, or his desiring me to make her
(or their) acquaintance, or voluntarily indicated the existence of such
a being or beings. I will not attempt to report our talk on this
subject; because, unlike what I have above given, it assumed somewhat
the character of a disputation, and I could hardly give it impartially;
but one remark made by President Young I think I can give accurately,
and it may serve as a sample of all that was offered on that side. It
was in these words, I think exactly: “If I did not consider myself
competent to transact a certain business without taking my wife’s or any
woman’s counsel with regard to it, I think I ought to let that business
alone.”[7] The spirit with regard to woman, of the entire Mormon, as of
all other polygamic systems, is fairly displayed in this avowal. Let any
such system become established and prevalent, and woman will soon be
confined to the harem, and her appearance in the street with unveiled
face will be accounted immodest. I joyfully trust that the genius of the
nineteenth century tends to a solution of the problem of woman’s sphere
and destiny radically different from this.
Footnote 7:
Another feature of President Young’s remarks on this topic strikes me
on revision. He assumed as undeniable that outside of the Mormon
church, married men usually keep mistresses—that incontinence is the
general rule, and continence the rare exception. This assumption was
habitual with the Mormons who, at various times, discussed with me the
subject of polygamy.
XXII.
THE MORMONS AND MORMONISM.
SALT LAKE CITY, _July 18, 1859_.
Since my interview with Brigham Young, I have enjoyed opportunities for
studying the Mormons in their social or festive and in their devotional
assemblies. Of private social intercourse—that is, intercourse between
family and family—I judge that there is comparatively little here;
between Mormons and Gentiles or strangers, of course still less. Their
religious services (in the tabernacle) are much like those that may be
shared or witnessed in the churches of most of our popular sects; the
music rather better than you will hear in an average worshiping
assemblage in the states; the prayers pertinent and full of unction; the
sermons adapted to tastes or needs different from mine. They seemed to
me rambling, dogmatic, and ill-digested; in fact, Elder Orson Pratt, who
preached last Sunday morning, prefaced his harangue by a statement that
he had been hard at work on his farm throughout the week, and labored
under consequent physical exhaustion. Elder John Taylor (I believe he is
one of the Twelve; at all events he is a high dignitary in the church,
and a man of decided natural ability) spoke likewise in the afternoon
with little or no premeditation. Now, I believe that every preacher
should be also a worker; I like to see one mowing or pitching hay in his
shirt-sleeves; and I hear with edification an unlettered but devout and
earnest evangelist who, having worked a part of the week for the
subsistence of his family, devotes the rest of it to preaching the
gospel to small school-house or wayside gatherings of hearers, simply
for the good of their souls. Let him only be sure to talk good sense,
and I will excuse some bad grammar. But when a preacher is to address a
congregation of one to three thousand persons, like that which assembles
twice each sabbath in the Salt Lake City Tabernacle, I insist that a due
regard for the economy of time requires that he should prepare himself,
by study and reflection, if not by writing, to speak directly to the
point. This mortal life is too short and precious to be wasted in
listening to rambling, loose-jointed harangues, or even to those which
severally consume an hour in the utterance, when they might be boiled
down and clarified until they were brought within the compass of half an
hour each. A thousand half-hours, Reverend Sir! have you ever pondered
their value? Suppose your time to be worth ten times that of an average
hearer; still, to take an extra half-hour from a thousand hearers in
order to save yourself ten or fifteen hours’ labor in the due and
careful preparation of a sermon, is a scandalous waste, which I see not
how to justify. Be entreated to repent and amend!
The two discourses to which I listened were each intensely and
exclusively Mormon. That is, they assumed that the Mormons were God’s
peculiar, chosen, beloved people, and that all the rest of mankind are
out of the ark of safety and floundering in heathen darkness. I am not
edified by this sort of preaching. It reminds me forcibly of the
Pharisee’s prayer: “Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other men
are—unjust, extortioners,” etc. I do not think good men delight in this
assumption of an exclusive patent for the grace of God; and I am quite
sure it is not well adapted to the transformation of bad men into good.
It is too well calculated to puff up its disciples with self-conceit and
spiritual pride. That Jesus Christ is about to re-appear on the earth in
all the pomp and splendor of a mighty conqueror—that he will then
proceed to take vengeance on his enemies (mankind in general, whether
heathen or nominally Christians) and to glorify his elect (the
Latter-Day Saints or Mormons) were treated by the Tabernacle preachers
as propositions too self-evident to need demonstration. Having thus
chastised his enemies and “gathered his elect from the four winds of
heaven,” the Saviour is to reign over them here on earth for a thousand
years; at the end of which period, they are together to be transferred
to heaven. Of course, I had heard the like of this before; but it always
seems to me a very gross and wooden perversion of the magnificent
imagery whereby the Bible foreshadows a great spiritual transformation.
The spirit of the Mormon religion appears to me Judaic rather than
Christian; and I am well assured that Heber C. Kimball, one of the great
lights of the church, once said in conversation with a Gentile—“I _do_
pray for my enemies: I pray that they may all go to hell.” Neither from
the pulpit nor elsewhere have I heard from a Mormon one spontaneous,
hearty recognition of the essential brotherhood of the human race—one
generous prayer for the enlightenment and salvation of all mankind. On
the other hand, I have been distinctly given to understand that my
interlocutors expect to sit on thrones and to bear rule over multitudes
in the approaching kingdom of God. In fact, one sincere, devout man has
to-day assigned that to me as a reason for polygamy; he wants to qualify
himself, by ruling a large and diversified family here, for bearing rule
over his principality in the “new earth,” that he knows to be at hand. I
think he might far better devote a few years to pondering Christ’s
saying to this effect, “He who would be least in the kingdom of heaven,
the same shall be greatest.”
I was undeceived with regard to the Book of Mormon. I had understood
that it is now virtually discarded, or at least neglected, by the church
in its services and ministrations. But Elder Pratt gave us a synopsis of
its contents, and treated it throughout as of equal authority and
importance with the Old and New Testaments. He did not read from it,
however, but from Malachi, and quoted text after text from the prophets,
which he cited as predictions of the writing and discovery of this book.
The congregation consisted, at either service of some fifteen hundred to
two thousand persons—more in the morning than the afternoon. A large
majority of them (not including the elders and chief men, of whom a
dozen or so were present) were evidently of European birth; I think a
majority of the males were past the meridian of life. All gave earnest
heed to the exercises throughout; in fact, I have seldom seen a more
devout and intent assemblage. I had been told that the Mormons were
remarkably ignorant, superstitious, and brutalized; but the aspect of
these congregations did not sustain that assertion. Very few rural
congregations would exhibit more heads evincing decided ability; and I
doubt whether any assemblage, so largely European in its composition,
would make a better appearance. Not that Europeans are less intellectual
or comely than Americans; but our emigrants are mainly of the poorer
classes; and poverty, privation, and rugged toil, plow hard, forbidding
lines in the human countenance elsewhere than in Utah. Brigham Young was
not present at either service.
Do I regard the great body of these Mormons as knaves and hypocrites?
Assuredly not. I do not believe there was ever a religion whereof the
great mass of the adherents were not honest and sincere. Hypocrites and
knaves there are in all sects; it is quite possible that some of the
magnates of the Mormon Church regard this so-called religion (with all
others) as a contrivance for the enslavement and fleecing of the many,
and the aggrandizement of the few; but I cannot believe that a sect, so
considerable and so vigorous as the Mormon, was ever founded in
conscious imposture, or built up on any other basis than that of earnest
conviction. If the projector, and two or three of his chief confederates
are knaves, the great body of their followers were dupes.
Nor do I accept the current Gentile presumption, that the Mormons are an
organized banditti—a horde of robbers and assassins. Thieves and
murderers mainly haunt the purlieus of great cities, or hide in caverns
and forests adjacent to the great routes of travel. But when the Mormon
leaders decided to set up their Zion in these parched mountain vales and
cañons, the said valleys were utterly secluded and remote from all
Gentile approach—away from any mail-route or channel of emigration. That
the Mormons wished to escape Gentile control, scrutiny, jurisprudence,
is evident; that they meant to abuse their inaccessibility, to the
detriment and plunder of wayfarers, is not credible.
Do I, then, discredit the tales of Mormon outrages and crime—of the
murder of the Parrishes, the Mountain Meadow massacre, etc.
etc.—wherewith the general ear has recently been shocked? No, I do not.
Some of these may have been fabricated by Gentile malice—others are
doubtless exaggerated—but there is some basis of truth for the current
Gentile conviction that the Mormons have robbed, maimed, and even killed
persons in this territory, under circumstances which should subject the
perpetrators to condign punishment, but that Mormon witnesses, grand
jurors, petit jurors, and magistrates determinedly screen the guilty. I
deeply regret the necessity of believing this; but the facts are
incontestable. That a large party of emigrants—not less than eighty—from
Arkansas to California, were foully massacred at Mountain-Meadows in
September, 1857, more immediately by Indians, but under the direct
inspiration and direction of the Mormon settlers in that vicinity—to
whom, and not to the savages, the emigrants had surrendered, after a
siege, on the strength of assurances that their lives at least should be
spared—is established by evidence that cannot (I think) be
invalidated—the evidence of conscience-smitten partakers in the crime,
both Indian and ex-Mormon, and of children of the slaughtered emigrants,
who were spared as too young to be dangerous even as witnesses, and of
whom the great majority have been sent down to the states as unable to
give testimony; but two boys are retained here as witnesses, who
distinctly remember that their parents surrendered to white men, and
that these white men at best did not attempt to prevent their perfidious
massacre. These children, moreover, were all found in the possession of
Mormons—not one of them in the hands of Indians; and, though the Mormons
say they ransomed them from the hands of Indians, the children deny it,
saying that they never lived with, nor were in the keeping of savages;
and the Indians bear concurrent testimony. So in the Parrish case: the
family had been Mormons, but had apostatized—and undertook to return to
the states; they were warned that they would be killed if they persisted
in that resolution; they did persist, and were killed. Of course, nobody
will ever be convicted of their murder; but those who warned them of the
fate on which they were rushing know why they were killed, and could
discover, if they would, who killed them.
The vital fact in the case is just this: The great mass of these people,
as a body, mean to be honest, just, and humane; but they are, before and
above all things else, Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons. They devoutly
believe that they are God’s peculiar and especial people, doing His
work, up-building His kingdom, and basking in the sunshine of His
peculiar favor. Whoever obstructs or impedes them in this work, then, is
God’s enemy, who must be made to get out of the way of the establishment
of Christ’s kingdom on earth—made to do so by lawful and peaceful means
if possible, but by any means that may ultimately be found necessary.
The Parrishes were apostates; had they been allowed to pursue their
journey to the states, they would have met many Saints coming up the
road, whose minds they would have troubled if not poisoned; and they
would have told stories after reaching their destination which would
have deepened the general prejudice against the Saints; so the
up-building and well-being of Christ’s kingdom required that they should
die. The Arkansas emigrants slaughtered at Mountain-Meadows, had in some
way abused the Saints, or interposed obstacles to the progress of God’s
work, and they were consequently given over to destruction. Far be it
from me to hint that one-fifth, one-tenth, one-twentieth, of the Mormons
ever bore any part in these bloody deeds, or even know to this day that
they were perpetrated. The great body of the Saints undoubtingly believe
all the current imputations of Mormon homicide and outrage to be
abominable calumnies. Many of the highest dignitaries of the church may
be included in this number. But there are men in the church who know
that they are _not_ calumnies—who know that Gentiles and apostates have
been killed for the church’s and for Christ’s sake, and who firmly
believe that they _ought_ to have been. I grieve to say it, but I hold
these more consistent and logical Mormons than their innocent and
unsuspicious brethren. For if I were a Latter-Day Saint, undoubtingly
believing all opposers of the Mormon Church to be God’s enemies,
obnoxious to His wrath and curse, and powerfully obstructing the rescue
of souls from eternal perdition and torture, I should be strongly
impelled to help put those opposers of God’s purposes out of the way of
sending any more immortal souls to everlasting fire. I should feel it my
duty so to act, as a lover of God and man. And I confidently predict
that not one Mormon who has killed a Gentile or apostate under a like
view of his duty will ever be fairly convicted in this territory. No
jury can be drawn here, unless in flagrant defiance of territorial laws,
which is not mainly composed of Mormons; and no such jury will convict a
Mormon of crime for any act done in behalf of God’s kingdom—that is, of
the Mormon church.
I ask, then, the advocates of “popular sovereignty” in the territories
to say what they propose to do in the premises. How do they intend to
adapt their principle to the existing state of facts? They have
superseded Brigham Young, with a full knowledge that at least
nine-tenths of the people of Utah earnestly desired his retention as
governor. They have sent hither a batch of judges, who would like to
earn their salaries; but the Mormon legislature devotes its sessions
principally to the work of crippling and fettering these judges, so that
they shall remain here as mere dummies or be driven into resignation.
Their juries are all drawn for them by Mormon officials, under
regulations which virtually exclude all but Mormons from each panel; it
is a violation of all the laws of Utah to cite in argument before any
judge or jury here the decisions of any court—even the supreme court of
the United States—but the courts of Utah; so that even the Dred Scott
decision could not lawfully be cited here in a fugitive slave case; in
short, the federal judiciary, the federal executive, and the federal
army, as now existing in Utah, are three transparent shams—three
egregious farces; they are costing the treasury very large sums to no
purpose; and the sooner the governor, marshal, judges, etc., resign, and
the army is withdrawn, the better for all but a handful of contractors.
“Popular sovereignty” has such full swing here that Brigham Young
carries the territory in his breeches’ pocket without a shadow of
opposition; he governs without responsibility to either law or public
opinion; for there is no real power here but that of “the church,” and
he is practically the church. The church is rich, and is hourly
increasing in wealth; the church settles all civil controversies which
elsewhere cause lawsuits; the church spends little or nothing, yet rules
everything; while the federal government, though spending two or three
millions per annum here, and keeping up a fussy parade of authority, is
powerless and despised. If, then, we are to have “popular sovereignty”
in the territories, let us have it pure and without shams. Let Brigham
be rëappointed governor; withdraw the present federal office-holders and
army; open shorter and better roads to California through the country
north of Bridger; and notify the emigrants that, if they choose to pass
through Utah, they will do so at their own risk. Let the Mormons have
the territory to themselves—it is worth very little to others, but
reduce its area by cutting off Carson Valley on the one side, and making
a Rocky Mountain territory on the other, and then let them go on their
way rejoicing. I believe this is not only by far the cheapest but the
safest and best mode of dealing with the difficulties already developed
and daily developing here, unless the notion of “popular sovereignty” in
the territories is to be utterly exploded and given up. “Popular
Sovereignty” in a territory is a contradiction in terms; but “popular
sovereignty” in a territory backed by a thousand sharp federal bayonets
and a battery of flying artillery, is too monstrous a futility, too
transparent a swindle, to be much longer upheld or tolerated.
XXIII.
SALT LAKE, AND ITS ENVIRONS.
SALT LAKE CITY, _July, 18, 1859_.
A party of us visited the lake on Saturday. It is not visible from this
city, though it must be from the mountains which rise directly north of
it, and more remotely on all sides, but Antelope, Stansbury, and perhaps
other islands in the lake, being mainly covered by high, rugged hills or
mountains, are in plain sight from every part of the valley. The best of
these islands is possessed by “the church,” (Mormon) as a herd-ground,
or _ranche_, for its numerous cattle, and is probably the best tract for
that purpose in the whole territory. That portion of the lake between it
and the valley is so shallow, that cattle may, at most seasons, be
safely driven over to the island; while it is so deep (between three and
four feet) that none will stray back again, and it would be difficult
and dangerous to steal cattle thence in the night, when that business is
mainly carried on. So the church has a large and capital pasture, and
her cattle multiply and wax fat at the least possible expense. The best
cañon for wood near this city is likewise owned by “the church”—_how_
owned, I can’t pretend to say—but whoever draws wood from it must
deposit every third load in the church’s[8] capacious yard. These are
but specimens of the management whereby, though the saints are generally
poor, often quite poor, so that a saint who has three wives can
sometimes hardly afford to keep two beds—“the church” has a comfortable
allowance of treasures laid up on earth. And her leading apostles and
dignitaries also, by a curious coincidence, seem to be in thriving
circumstances. It looks to me as though neither they nor the church
could afford to have the world burnt up for a while yet.
Footnote 8:
On further inquiry, I learn that Brigham Young personally is the owner
of this splendid placer; but, as he is practically the church, the
correction was hardly worth making.
Crossing, just west of the city, the Jordan (which drains the fresh
waters of Lake Utah into Salt Lake, and is a large, sluggish creek), we
are at once out of the reach of irrigation from the northern hills—the
river intercepting all streams from that quarter—and are once more on a
parched clay-plain, covered mainly with our old acquaintances, sage-bush
and grease-wood; though there are wet, springy tracts, especially toward
the southern mountains and near the lake, which produce rank, coarse
grass. Yet this seeming desert has naturally a better soil than the
hard, pebbly gravel on which the city stands, and which irrigation has
converted into bounteous gardens and orchards. I rejoice to perceive
that a dam over the Jordan is in progress, whereby a considerable
section of the valley of that river (which valley is forty miles long,
by an average of twenty broad) is to be irrigated. There are serious
obstacles to the full success of this enterprise in the scarcity of
timber and the inequality of the plain, which is gouged and cut up by
numerous (now dry) water-courses; but, if this project is well
engineered, it will double the productive capacity of this valley, and I
earnestly trust it may be. In the absence of judicious and systematic
irrigation, there are far too many cattle and sheep on this great
common, as the gaunt look of most of the cattle abundantly testifies.
Water also is scarce and bad here; we tried several of the springs which
are found at the bases of the southern mountains, and found them all
brackish, while not a single stream flows from those mountains in the
five or six miles that we skirted them, and I am told that they afford
but one or two scanty rivulets through the whole extent of this valley.
In the absence of irrigation, nothing is grown or attempted but wild
grass; of the half-dozen cabins we have passed between the Jordan and
the lake, not one had even the semblance of a garden, or of any
cultivation whatever. A shrewd woman, who had lived seven years near the
lake, assured me that it would do no good to attempt cultivation there;
“too much alkali” was her reason. I learn that, on the city side of the
Jordan, when irrigation was first introduced, and cultivation attempted,
the soil, whenever allowed to become dry, was covered, for the first
year or two, with some whitish alkaline substance or compound; but this
was soon washed out and washed off by the water, so that no alkali now
exhibits itself, and this tract produces handsomely. Let the Jordan be
so dammed, and its waters conducted into lateral canals that its whole
valley may be amply irrigated, and there are few tracts of like area
that will produce more generously, albeit, a majority of its acres now
seem almost as sterile and hopeless as the great American desert.
That this lake should be salt, is no anomaly. All large bodies of water
into which streams discharge them selves, while they have severally no
outlet, are or should be salt. If one such is fresh, that is an anomaly
indeed. Lake Utah probably receives as much saline matter as Salt Lake;
but she discharges it through the Jordan and remains herself fresh;
while Salt Lake, having no issue save by evaporation, is probably the
saltest body of water on earth. The ocean is comparatively fresh; even
the Mediterranean is not half so salt. I am told that three barrels of
this water yield a barrel of salt; that seems rather strong, yet its
intense saltness, no one who has not had it in his eyes, his mouth, his
nostrils, can realize. You can no more sink in it than in a claybank,
but a very little of it in your lungs would suffice to strangle you. You
make your way in from a hot, rocky beach over a chaos of volcanic basalt
that is trying to the feet; but, at a depth of a yard or more, you have
a fine sand bottom, and here the bathing is delightful.
The water is of a light green color for ten or twenty rods; then
“deeply, darkly, beautifully blue.” No fish can live in it; no frog
abides it; few birds are ever seen dipping into it. The rugged mountains
in and about it—just such scarped and seamed and gullied precipices as I
have been describing ever since I reached Denver—have a little fir and
cotton-wood or quaking-asp in their deeper ravines or behind their
taller cliffs, but look bare and desolate to the casual observer; and
these cut the lake into sections and hide most of it from view.
Probably, less than a third of it is visible from any single point. But
this suffices.