1865.] SCENERY OF WONDERFUL BEAUTY. 347 it is a lovely little lake, fringed by green poplars, with a background of purple mountains, bearing aloft soft coronets of cloud. From these springs we rode back, in a glorious atmosphere, under skies of wonderful blue. Behind us were the Great Salt Lake, and the greater mountains. On our right was the shining Jordan, to the Mormons better than Abana and Pharpar or all the other waters of Damascus. Beyond the river a strip of valley; then lofty mountain slopes, seagreen at the base, dark slate toward the summits. Before us was the city, with its flashing streams, its low, adobe houses with trellised verandas; its green gardens, and shade-trees of locust, aspen, poplar, maple, walnut, elder and cottonwood; its bustling marts of trade, and cloistered retreats for the offices of a strange religion. Miles beyond stretched the green valley, its blue, shimmering lakes bounded at last by a wall of mountain. And on our left still towered the range, gashed with great yawning crevices that would swallow New York and its environs —its solid base green and gray, its summits white with eternal snow. Side by side, blending into one matchless picture, were summer and winter. Italy and Switzerland, the dreamy Orient and the restless Occident. That afternoon and the following Sunday we attended Mormon religious service. The people are erecting an enormous temple of granite which will seat ten thousand people and will be one of the finest church edifices in the United States. As yet it has not made much progress. The Saints worship in a frame building during the winter months, and in summer at the Bowery—a great arbor with seats of rough pine boards, and a low, flat roof of withered branches, supported by upright poles. For the warm season it is far pleasanter than any building; a good substitute for the groves which were God's first temples. During our stay of eight days we were most hospitably entreated by Mormon authorities and citizens, always kind to strangers and anxious to eradicate any unfavorable impressions of their faith and practices. They entertained us in their houses—a hospitality rarely extended to Gentiles. They showed us the varied industries which have originated in the wise determination of their leaders to make them a self-sustaining people. 348 EIGHT DAYS AMONG THE MORMONS. [1865. One turned us loose among his delicious strawberries and juicy cherries. Apricots, peaches, plums, pears, and apples were all ripening upon his trees. Beside them, just beyond his inclosure, the dreary sage-brush was growing on the dry, sandy soil; and four years before his garden was an unbroken desert like the rest. In his house caterpillers were making silk. The linen of his factory of Brigham Young's from cotton grown in the southern counties. On the second Sunday, at the Bowery, the congregation numbered fully five thousand. In accordance with the desire expressed by Mr. Colfax, Brigham preached. He appeared upon the platform in solemn black. He claimed that the Mormons believe implicitly every word of the bible; said that God created Adam 'by the only process known to nature-just as men now create children;' cited history to prove that polygamy had been sanctioned both by Martin Luther and the Church of England; and declared that an English husband dissatisfied with his wife could even now lead her to the public market and sell her! 1865.] MIRACLES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 349 His sermon was shallow and disjointed. A Mormon elder assured us that it was the weakest he ever heard from 'the president.' But it had one ebullition of naturalness. He said: 'The Latter-day Saints are the happiest people in the world— the most industrious, the most peaceable among themselves. At least they would be, but for a few miserable, stinking lawyers on Whisky street, who for five dollars will prove that black is white!' That evening in the telegraph office, Mr. Colfax had a pleasant chat with his friend Fred. MacCrellish who chanced to be in the San Francisco office eight hundred miles to the west. The next morning Governor Bross conversed familiarly for half an hour with a member of his family who was in the Chicago office fifteen hundred miles to the east! Up to this time Brigham Young had never called upon strangers, whether public men or private citizens, until they had first shown their respect for his position as president of the Mormon church, by calling upon him. But Mr. Colfax as a Government official declined to violate the etiquette of the civilized world by making the initial visit. So Brigham, Heber Kimball, and eight other church leaders spent two hours with the speaker and his party at our hotel. In the long, rambling conversation which followed, Brigham observed that he had dealt largely with Indians and whites, Mormons and Gentiles, and if any man could show that he had wronged him he would restore it fourfold, invited any of us who might be 'religiously inclined' to address his Saints on Sunday; and declared that every dollar of gold taken out in the United States had cost one hundred dollars. It caused murders, anarchy, vigilance committees and idleness. If the Mormons were to enact the lawless scenes common to all gold countries, Government troops would be sent to subdue them. He referred to the prosperity of his people as miraculous, and pointedly and bitterly repeated: 'We cannot be annihilated.' The next day we returned his visit, at a little building between his two chief residences, the Lion house and Bee-hive house. The former receives its name from a lion couchant over its front door; the latter from a bee-hive (the chosen device of the Saints,) upon its dome. The porter at the lodge, a sentry box beside the |