350 FRANK DISCUSSION WITH BRIGHAM YOUNG. [1865.

gate in the strong inclosing wall, had a revolver hanging beside him; but permitted us to pass, as we were accompanied by a leading Mormon. President' Young, with several dignitaries of the church, received us in his large, airy office, with high walls, maps, photographs of prominent Latter-day Saints, a lithographic copy of Bierstadt's Sunlight and Shadow, scales for weighing gold-dust, account books, desks and arm chairs.

At first the conversation was heavy and formal, though Brigham gave us a good deal of information about farming. Nothing is raised without irrigation; but water makes the soil very productive. Corn is more uncertain than small grains; but sixty bushels to the acre are a fair yield, and ninety have been produced. He once raised ninety-three and a half bushels of wheat to the acre; ninety bushels of oats are not uncommon. Many farmers leave their cattle out in winter; but they often die from cold. Coal and iron abound, but iron is not yet successfully smelted.

A lively general discussion upon polygamy ensued. Brigham defended it with skill, historically and scripturally, though admitting that even in Utah male and female births are about equal, and a little staggered when asked if that indicated that one man should have a dozen wives! They had adopted 'plurality' (as the Saints invariably term polygamy) only in accordance with a special revelation from God. Their morality justified it. They had not a house of prostitution nor four illegitimate children in the Territory. How did we expect it to be done away with?

Mr. Colfax suggested that he might yet receive another special revelation to stop it!

Brigham and his supporters earnestly insisted that it was a part of their religion with which Government had no right to interfere; and were indignant at our suggestion that though hanging witches, burning widows and sacrificing human beings to idols had all been practiced as 'parts of religions' they would not be tolerated by modern law and civilization. It was the freest and frankest discussion ever held in the office of Brigham Young.

Our stay in Salt Lake lasted only eight days. But three months later I returned to Utah alone, and spent five weeks among the Saints. The notes in the succeeding chapter are from observations during both visits.

1865.]

THE CITY OF THE FUTURE.

1

351

CHAPTER XXX.

SALT LAKE is the city of the future-the natural metropolis of all Utah and portions of Nevada, Idaho, Montana, and Colorado. It contains nearly twenty thousand people, and bids fair to continue the largest city between St. Louis and San Francisco. The overland telegraph connects it with the Atlantic and the Pacific; mail-coaches ply daily to Nebraska and Kansas on the east, California on the west, Montana on the north, Idaho and Columbia river on the northwest, and the Pah Ranagar silver region four hundred miles to the southwest. The hotel is usually crowded with guests; and the streets, one hundred and twenty-eight feet wide and watered by little rills on each side, are thronged with the wagons of immigrants and farmers, with women and children, Saints and sinners, miners and Indians. Some of the trading-houses do an immense business. A single merchant has sold more than a million dollars worth of goods per annum.

There are two daily newspapers: the Vedette, representing the Gentile population; and the Telegraph, in the interest of the Mormons. The weekly Deseret News, almost as old as the city, is the organ of the church. In a Territorial population of nearly one hundred thousand, all are Mormons except a few hundred, who reside chiefly in Salt Lake City.

Camp Douglas is beautifully located on a high plateau, two miles from the city which its artillery commands. This garrisoned post of the United States army has been a potent restraint upon the despotic power of the Mormon church, as it affords protection to all men and women who abandon that faith. Many recanting Saints, chiefly wives dissatisfied with polygamy, have here sought the shelter of the national flag, and been sent from the Territory under military escort.

352

ALL THE JEWS ARE GENTILES.

[1863. There is now a flourishing Gentile church and Sunday-school in the city, liberally supported by dissenters of every denomination who, like all small minorities, are very compact, and remain united by the common bond of antipathy to Mormon rule. Even Jews, who are quite numerous, contribute to this church; and in excited moments talk earnestly about 'us Shentiles.' In this strange community all the brethren are Saints, all the outsiders are sinners, and all the Jews are Gentiles!

Joseph Smith founder of the Mormon hierarchy, was a native of Vermont, who claimed that the book of Mormon, the bible of the Latter-day Saints, buried in the earth, was pointed out to him by the angel Moroni; that, digging it up, he found it written upon metallic plates in mysterious characters, which a special revelation from God enabled him to translate. Claiming to be the production of several writers, it is about as large as the Old Testament, of which it is a weak, incoherent and vapid imitation. Several hundred of its verses are stolen with very slight alterations from the New Testament, which according to Mormon chronology was written hundreds of years later than their own inspired volume. Singularly enough, it contains many denunciations of polygamy; but consistency is a jewel rarely found in the casket of the

Latter-day Saints. Smith possessed great force of character and business sagacity, and was said to have accumulated a fortune of some millions of dollars.

Brigham Young, who succeeded Joseph Smith in the 'first presidency' of the church, was also born in Vermont. He is six feet high, portly, weighing about two hundred, in his sixty-sixth year, and wonderfully well-preserved. His face resembles that of the late Thomas H. Benton, though with a suggestion of grossness about the puffed cheeks and huge neck which Old Bullion never gave. His cheek is fresh and unwrinkled; his step agile and elastic; his curling, auburn hair and whiskers untinged

BRIGHAM YOUNG.

1865.]

PERSONAL DESCRIPTION OF BRIGHAM.

353

with gray.
polygamy the fountain of perpetual youth?

Is he a new Ponce de Leon, who has found in

He has grayish-blue, secretive eyes, eagle nose, and mouth that shuts like a vice, indicating tremendous firmness. He uses neither tea nor coffee, spirits nor tobacco. With an affable and dignified manner he manifests the unmistakable egotism of one having authority. In little ebullitions of earnestness he speaks right at people, using his dexter forefinger with emphasis, to point a moral. He treats the brethren with warmth, throwing his arm caressingly about them and asking carefully after the wives and babies.

Provincialisms of his Vermont boyhood and his western man-
hood still cling to him. He says 'leetle,' 'beyend' and 'disre-
member.' An irrepressible conflict between his nominatives and
verbs, crops out in expressions like 'they was.'

He has observed much, thought much, and mingled much with
practical men; but seems unfamiliar with the usages of cultivated
society. Yet those who hold him a cheap charlatan are wilder
if possible than the Saints who receive him as an angel of light,
or those Gentiles who denounce him as a goblin damned. A strik-
ing embodiment of the One-man Power, he holds a hundred thou-
sand people in the hollow of his hand. Gathered from every
nation, always poor, usually ignorant, sometimes vicious, he has
molded them into an industrious, productive, honest and homo-
geneous community. As a class they have doubtless improved
their condition by settling in Utah. Owning the most desirable
property at home and well-husbanded investments in England, he
is one of the millionares of the United States. He is universally
popular among the Saints and rules them with utmost ease.
is a man of brains, who would have achieved great success in any
walk of life. Many believe him an imposter and an atheist. But
I fancy he is that combination so frequent in history, half-deceiver
and half-fanatic.

He

He has great knowledge of human nature and rare business capacity, and is reputed kind-hearted and just in his commercial dealings. All Mormons are required to pay one-tenth of their incomes annually to the church; and, so far as a Gentile can see, Brigham is the church and the church is Brigham.

His inclosure of ten acres in the very heart of the city is sur

354

AN HOUR IN BRIGHAM'S SCHOOL.

[1865.

rounded by a wall, eleven feet high, of bowlders laid in mortar. It contains his two chief dwellings, the Lion House and the Bee-hive House. In them reside most of his wives, though a few favorite

ones occupy separate dwellings outside. The inclosure contains various other buildings for his domestic and business purposes, and ample, well-kept gardens abounding in flowers and fruits.

Babies seem indigenous to Salt Lake. Their abundance through all the streets causes wonder till one remembers that they are the only product of the soil which does not require irrigation.

By Brigham's invitation I spent an hour in his school. Its register bore the names of thirty-four pupils; three, Brigham's grandchildren; all the rest his own sons and daughters. There were twenty-eight present, from four to seventeen years old, on the whole looking brighter and more intelligent than the children of any other school I ever visited.

With three of the prophet's daughters I had some conversation.