But here we are approaching Denver. The cottonwood has mustered into clusters, a prototype of the future of these now scattered ranches. Dotted about here and there in suitable corners, on river bank or under sheltering bluff, single trees are growing side by side with single stockyards or single cow-boys' huts, but every now and again, where nature offers them a good site for a colony, the trees congregate, select lots, and permanently locate. It is not very different after all, with human beings.
Nature here is undoubtedly tempting, and Denver itself must surely be one of the most beautiful towns in the States. Through great reaches of splendid farm-land, with water in abundance and the cottonwood and willow growing thickly, we pass to our destination as the twilight settles on the country.
A whole day has again been spent in the train! We had awaked in the morning to see from the car windows the people of Nebraska going out to their day's work in the fields, and here in the evening we sit and watch the Colorado folk coming home to their rest after the day's work is over. Truly this steam is a Latter-Day apocalypse and this America a land of magnificent distances.
I found out on this trip that my fellow-travellers (and the fact holds good nearly all over America) took the greatest interest in British India, and finding that I had spent so many years there, they plied me with questions. On some journeys it would be the political aspect of our government of Hindostan that interested, at others the commercial or the social. But going through Colorado, one of the haunts of the "grizzly" and the "mountain lion," I had to detail my experiences of sport in India. Above all, the tiger interested them. It is the only animal in the world that may be said to give the grizzly a point or two. And there are some even who deny this; but I, who have shot the tiger, and never seen a grizzly, naturally concede the first place in perilous courage to Stripes, the raja of the jungle. In one particular aspect, at any rate, the tiger is supreme among quadrupeds. It has the splendid audacity to make man his regular food.
Now, it is generally supposed that the "man-eater" is a specially formidable variety of the species; that it is only the boldest, strongest, and fiercest of the tigers that preys on man. But the very reverse is of course the truth. When hale and strong the tiger avoids the vicinity of men, finding abundant food in the herds of deer and other wild animals that share his jungles. But when strength and speed of limb begin to fail, the brute has to look for easier prey than the courageous bison or wind-footed antelope, and so skulks among the ravines and waste patches of woodland that are to be found about nearly every village. Then when twilight obscures the scene, he creeps out noiseless as a shadow, and lies in ambush in a crop of standing grain or bhair-tree brake, and watches the country folk go by from the fields in twos and threes, driving their plough cattle before them. After a while, there comes sauntering past alone, a man or a woman who has lagged behind the company; yet not so far behind but that the friends ahead can hear the scream which tells of the tiger's leap, though too far for help to be of use. During four years 350 human beings and 24,000 head of cattle were killed by these animals in one district in Bombay, while many single tigers have been known to destroy over a hundred people before they were shot. One in the Mandla district caused the desertion of thirteen villages and threw out of cultivation two hundred and fifty square miles of country; while another, only one of many similar cases, was credited with the appalling total of eighty human victims per annum! The yearly loss in cattle and by decrease of cultivation through the ravages of these fearful beasts has been estimated at ten million pounds sterling!
No wonder, then, that even these doughty grizzly-slayers of the Rockies respect the tiger's name.
IN LEADVILLE.
The South Park line—Oscar Wilde on sunflowers as food—In a wash-hand basin—Anti-Vigilance Committees—Leadville the city of the carbonates—"Busted" millionaires—The philosophy of thick boots—Colorado miners—National competition in lions—Abuse of the terms "gentleman" and "lady"—Up at the mines—Under the pine-trees.
STARTING from Denver for Leadville in the evening, it seemed as if we were fated to see nothing of the very interesting country through which the South Park line runs. At first there is nothing to look at but open prairie land sprinkled with the homesteads of agricultural pioneers, but as the moon got up there was gradually revealed a stately succession of mountain ridges, and in about two hours we found ourselves threading the spurs of the Sangre di Christi range and following the Platte River up toward its sources. Crossing and recrossing the cañon, with one side silvered, and the other thrown into the blackest shadow by the moon, and the noisy stream tumbling along beside us in its hurry to get down to the lazy levels of the great Nebraska Valley, I saw glimpses of scenery that can never be forgotten. It was fantastic in the extreme; for apart from the jugglery of moonlight, in itself so wonderful always, the ideas of relative distance and size, even of shape, were upset and ridiculed by the snowy peaks that here and there thrust themselves up into the sky and by the patches and streaks of snow that concealed and altered the contour of the nearer rocks in the most puzzling manner imaginable. And all this time the little train—for the line is narrow-gauge—kept twisting and wriggling in and out as if it were in collusion with the hills, and playing into their hands to disconcert the traveller.
I have seen at different times great curiosities of engineering, as in travelling over the Ghats in Western India, where everything is stupendous and at times even terrific, where danger seems perpetual and disaster often inevitable. In passing by train from Colombo to Kandy in Ceylon, and crossing Sensation Rock, the railway cars actually hang over the precipice, so that when you look out of the window the track on which you are running is invisible, and you can drop an orange plumb down the face of this appalling cliff on to the tops of the palm-trees, which look like little round bushes in the valley down below. From Durban to Pietermaritzburg again, on the line along which, when it was first opened, the engine-driver brought out from England refused to take his train, declaring it to be too dangerous, but along which, nevertheless, the British troops going up to Zululand were all safely carried. The South Park line, however, can compare with these, and must be accepted as one of the acknowledged triumphs of railway enterprise. For much of its length the rocks had to be fought inch by inch, and they died hard. The result to-day is a very picturesque and interesting ride, with a surprise in every mile and beauty all the way.
On the way to the "City of the Carbonates," I heard much of Leadville ways and life. That very morning the energetic police of the town had arrested two young ladies for parading the sunflower and the lily too conspicuously. One had donned a sunflower for a hat, the other walked along holding a tall lily in her hand. The Leadville youth had gathered in disorderly procession behind the aesthetic pair. So the police arrested the fair causes of the disturbance.
I told Oscar Wilde of this a few days later. "Poor sweet things!" said he; "martyrs in the cause of the Beautiful." He was on his way to Salt Lake City at the time, and I told him how the Mormon capital was par excellence "the city of sunflowers," and assured him that the poet's feeding on "gilliflowers rare" was not, after all, too violent a stretch of imagination, as whole tribes of Indians (and Longfellow himself has said that every Indian is a poem, which is very nearly the same thing as a poet) feed on the sunflower. The Apostle of Art Decoration was delighted.
"Poor sweet things!" said he; "feed on sunflowers! How charming! If I could only have stayed and dined with them! But how delightful to be able to go back to England and say that I have actually been in a country where whole tribes of men live on sunflowers! The preciousness of it!"
It is a fact, probably new to some of my readers: that the wild sunflower is the characteristic weed of Utah, and that the seeds of the plant supply the undiscriminating Red Man with an oil-cake which may agreeably vary a diet of grasshoppers and rattlesnakes, but has not intrinsically any flavour to recommend it. So South Kensington must not rush away with the idea that the noble savage who has the Crow for his "totem," feeds upon the blossoms of the vegetable they worship. It is the prosaic oil-cake that the Pi-ute eats.
But all I heard got mixed up eventually into a general idea that every man in the place who had not committed a murder was a millionaire, and all those who had not lost their lives had lost a fortune. The mines, too, got gradually sorted up into two kinds—those that had "five million now in sight, sir," or those whose "bottoms had fallen out." But one fact that pleased me particularly was the "Anti-Vigilance" Committee of Leadville. Every one knows that a "Vigilance Committee" consists of a certain number of volunteer guardians of the peace, who call (with a rope) upon strangers visiting their neighbourhood and offer them the choice of being hanged at once for the offences they purpose committing or of going elsewhere to commit them. The strangers, as it transpires in the morning, sometimes choose one course and sometimes the other. This is all very right and proper, and conduces to a general good understanding. But in Leadville, the citizens started an anti-vigilance committee and so the Vigilance Committee sent in their resignations to themselves—and accepted them. I do not think I ever heard of a fact so appalling in its significance. But the humour of it is that the Anti-Vigilance Committee managed somehow to keep the peace in Leadville as it had never been kept before.
It reminded me of an incident of the Afghan war. A certain tribe of hill-men persisted in killing the couriers who carried the post from one British camp to the other, and the generals were nearly at their wits' end for means of communication, when the murderers sent in word offering to carry the post themselves—and did so, faithfully!
It was in Leadville also that lived the barber who, going forth one night, was met by two men who told him peremptorily to take his hands out of his pockets, as they intended to take out all the rest. But he had nothing in his pockets except two Derringers, so he pulled his hands out and shot the two men dead where they stood. Next morning the citizens of Leadville placed the barber in a triumphal chair, and carried him round the town as a bright example to the public, presented him with a gold watch and chain as a testimonial of their esteem for his courage—and then escorted him the first stage out of the town, advising him never to return.
But this was in the Leadville of the very remote past—1880 or thereabouts—and not in the Carbonate City of the present, 1882. The town is now as quiet as such a town can be, a wonderfully busy place and a picturesque one.
And while my companions talked I sat in the wash-hand basin and smoked. Why the wash-hand basin? Because there was nowhere else to sit. The "smoking-car" of this particular train happened to be also the gentlemen's lavatory, a commodious snuggery measuring about eight feet by five. And as there were only eight smokers on board we were not so crowded as we should have been if there had been eighteen, and then, you see, we made more room still by two of the eight staying away. For the rest, two of us sat in the wash-hand basins, one on a stool between our legs, another on a stool with his knees against the gentlemen opposite, and the balance stood. We were an example of tight packing even to the proverbial sardine. But I found the water-tap at the edge of the basin an inconvenient circumstance. I would venture to suggest to American railway companies that for the comfort of smokers when sitting in the basins they should place these taps a little farther back.
I suppose I ought to give some mining statistics about Leadville. But the very fact that I shall be neglecting an obvious duty if I omit all statistics, nearly decides me to omit them. The deliberate neglect of an obvious duty is, however, a luxury which only the very virtuous can indulge in; and to compromise therefore with the situation, I would state that the mining output of Leadville is to-day about eleven times as great as it was two years ago, and that five years ago there was no output at all. That is to say, this town of Leadville, with a population, floating and permanent together, of some 40,000 souls, and yielding from its mines about a thousand dollars per head of the total population, was five years ago a camp of a few hundred miners, as a rule so disappointed with the prospect of the place that another year of the status quo would have seen Leadville deserted. But the secret of the carbonates being "ore-iferous" was discovered, and Tabor, like the fossil of some antediluvian giant, was gradually revealed by the pick of the miner, in all his Plutocratic bulk. A few years ago he was selling peanuts at the corner of a street. To-day he moves about, king of Denver, with Leadville for an appanage. His potentiality in cheques increases yearly by another cipher added to the total, and drags at each remove a lengthening chain of wealth. Why do men go on accumulating money when they are already masters of enough? Surely it is better to be rich than a pauper? But in Colorado this is not the general opinion. Men there prefer to be ruined rather than be merely rich. And the result is that you could hardly throw a boot out of the hotel window without hitting an ex-millionaire. Not that I would advise anybody to go throwing boots promiscuously out of hotel windows in Leadville. You would run a good chance of following your boots.
"Do you see that man there, paring his boot with a knife?" asked my companion.
"Yes," said I, "I see him; there is a good deal of him to see."
"Well," said he, "that's So-and-so. He sold so-and-so for $400,000 about a year ago. But he busted last Fall. And if you get into conversation with him, he'll be glad to borrow a dollar from you."
"Then I shall not get into conversation with him," I replied.
"And do you see that old fellow on the other side, leaning against the hitching post, outside the Post Office?"
"Well," said I, "they seem to be mostly leaning against the hitching-post, but I presume you mean the gentleman in the middle."
"Yes," was the reply. "That's So-and-so. He struck the so-and-so, got $80,000 for his share about six weeks ago—and is busted."
And so on ad infinitum. The problem was a very puzzling one to me at first—why do such men make fortunes if they take the first opportunity of throwing them away? But the solution, I fancy, is this—that these men do not care for money. It is to them what knowledge is to the philosopher, a means of acquiring more—worthless in itself, but, as leading to larger results, worthy of all eagerness in its pursuit. They do not put Wealth before themselves as an accumulation of current coins, capable of purchasing everything that makes life materially pleasant. They contemplate it merely in the bulk. Much in the same way a whaler never thinks of the number of candles in the spermaceti into which he has struck a harpoon. He looks at his quarry only as a "ten barrel" or a "fifteen barrel" whale, as the case may be. He does not content himself with the illuminating potentialities of the creature he pursues. He is only anxious as to how it will barrel off, and the barrels might be pork, or potatoes, or anything else. So with the man who goes out mine-hunting. He harpoons a lode, lays open so many "millions" of ore, sells it to a company for a "million" or two, and straightway goes and "busts" for so many "millions." It does not seem to concern such a one that a "million" of dollars is so many guineas, or roubles, or napoleons, or mohurs, and so forth, and that if he goes on to the end of his life, he can never achieve more than money. His arithmetic goes mad, and he begins computing from the wrong end of the line. Ten thousands of dollars make one 50-cent piece, two 50-cent pieces make one quarter, five quarters make one nickel, five nickels make one cent, and "quite a lot" of cents make one fortune. So at it he goes again, trying to foot up a satisfactory balance with thousands for units—and "busts" before he gets to the end of the sum.
Leadville itself as I first saw it, ringed in with snow-covered hills, a bright sun shining and a slight snow falling, remains in my memory as one of the prettiest scenes in my experience. In Switzerland even it could hold its own, and triumph. I wandered about its streets and into its shops and saloons, curious to see some of those men of whom I had heard so much; but whatever may have been their exercises with bowie-knife and pistol at a later hour of the day, I was never more agreeably disappointed than by the manners and bearing of the Leadville miners early in the morning.
There is nothing gives a man so much self-reliance as having thick boots on. This fact I have evolved out of my own consciousness, for when I was out in the Colonies I often tried to analyze a certain sense of "independence" which I found taking possession of me. The climate no doubt was exceptionally invigorating, and I was a great deal on horseback. But I had been subjected to the same conditions elsewhere without experiencing the same results. And after a great deal of severe mental inquiry, I decided that it was—my thick boots! And I was right. No man can feel properly capable of taking care of himself in slippers. In patent-leather boots he is little better, and in what are called "summer walking-shoes" he still finds himself fastidious about puddles, and at a disadvantage with every man he meets who does not mind a rough road. But once you begin to thicken the sole, self-reliance commences to increase, and by the time your boots are as solid as those of a Colorado miner you should find yourself his equal in "independence." And some of their boots are prodigious. The soles are over an inch thick, project in front of the toes perhaps half an inch, and form a ledge, as it were, all round the foot. What a luxury with such boots it must be to kick a man!
The rest of the costume was often in keeping with the shoe leather, and in every case where the wearers did not belong to the shops and offices of the town, there was a general attention to strength of material and personal comfort, at a sacrifice of appearance, which was refreshing and unconventional. They are a fine set, indeed, this miscellaneous congregation of nationalities which men call "Colorado diggers." There is hardly a stupid face among them, and certainly not a cowardly one. And then compare them with the population of their native places—the savages of the East of London, the outer barbarians of Scandinavia, the degraded peasantry of Western Ireland! The contrast is astonishing. Left in Europe they might have guttered along in helpless poverty relieved only by intervals of crime, till old age found them in a workhouse. But here they can insist on every one pretending to think them "as good as himself" (such is, I believe, the formula of this preposterous hypocrisy), and, at any rate, may hope for sudden wealth. Above all, a man here does not go about barefooted, like so many of his family "at home," or in ragged shoe-leather, like so many more of them; but stands, and it may even be sleeps, in boots of unimpeachable solidity. So he goes down the street as if it were his own, planting his feet firmly at every step, and, not having to trouble himself about the condition of the footway, keeps his head erect. Depend upon it, thick boots are one of the secrets of "independence" of character.
But Leadville, this wonderful town that in four years sprang up from 300 to 30,000 inhabitants, is not entirely a city of miners. On the day that I was there larger numbers than usual were in the streets, in consequence of an election then in progress holding out promises of unusual entertainment. Besides these there is, of course, the permanent population of commerce and ordinary business; and I was struck here, as I had not been before since I left Boston, with the natural phenomenon of a race reverting to an old type. Boston reminded me at times of some old English cathedral city. Leadville was like some thriving provincial town. The men would not have looked out of place in the street, say, of Reading; while the women, in their quiet and somewhat old-fashioned style of dressing, reminded me very curiously of rural England. Indeed, I do not think my anticipations have ever been so completely upset as in Leadville. All the way from New York I have been told to wait "till I got to Colorado" before I ventured to speak of rough life, and Leadville itself was sometimes particularized to me as the Ultima Thule of civilization, the vanishing-point of refinement.
But not only is Leadville not "rough;" it is even flirting with the refinements of life. It has an opera-house, a good drive for evening recreation, and a florist's shop. There were not many plants in it, it is true, but they were nearly all of them of the pleasant old English kinds—geraniums, pansies, pinks, and mignonette. Two other shops interested me, one stocked with mineral specimens—malachite, agate, amethyst, quartz, blood-stone, onyx, and an infinite variety of pieces of ore, gold, silver, lead, iron, copper, bismuth, and sulphur—with which pretty settings are made, of a quaint grotto-work kind, for clocks and inkstands. The other a naturalist's shop, in which, besides fossils, exquisite leaves in stone and petrified tree-fragments, I found the commencement of a zoological collection—the lynx with its comfortable snow-coat on, and the grey mountain wolf not less cozily dressed; squirrels, black and grey, "the creatures that sit in the shade of their tails," and the "friends of Hiawatha" with various birds—the sage hen and the prairie chicken, the magpie (very like the English bird), and the "lark,"—a very inadequate substitute indeed for the bird that "at Heaven's gate sings," that has been sanctified to all time by Shelley, and the idol of the poets of the Old World—and heads of large game, horned and antlered, and the skin of a "lion." It is a curious fact that every country should thus insist on having a lion. For the real African animal himself I entertain only a very qualified respect. For some of his substitutes, the panther of Sumatra and the Far East, the (now extinct) cat of Australia, and the puma of the United States, that respect is even more moderate in degree. "The American lion" is, in fact, about as much like the original article as the American "muffin" is like the seductive but saddening thing from which it takes its name. The puma, which is its proper name, is the least imposing of all the larger cats. It cannot compare even with the jaguar, and would not be recognized by the true lion, or by the tiger, as being a kinsman. It is just as true of lions as it is of Glenfield starch—"when you ask for it, see that you get it." I admit that it is very creditable to America that in the great competition of nations she should insist on not being left behind even in the matter of lions, but surely it would be more becoming to her vast resources and her undeniable enterprise if she imported some of the genuine breed, instead of, as at present, putting up with such a shabby compromise as the puma.
This tendency to exaggeration in terms has I know been very frequently commented upon. But I don't remember having heard it suggested that this grandiosity must in the long-run have a detrimental effect upon national advancement. Presuming for instance that an American understands the real meaning of the word "city," what gross and ridiculous notions of self-importance second-class villages must acquire by hearing themselves spoken of as "cities." Or supposing that one understands the real meaning of the word "lady," how comes it that an ill-bred, ill-mannered chambermaid is always spoken of as a "lady"? If the name is only given in courtesy, why not call them princesses at once and rescue the nobler word from its present miserable degradation?
I was in the Chicago Hotel and a coloured porter was unstrapping my luggage. I rang the bell for a message boy, and on another black servant appearing I gave him a written note to take down to the manager. But in that insolent manner so very prevalent among the blacker hotel servants in America, he said: "That other gentleman will take it down." "Other gentleman!" I gasped out in astonishment; "there is only one gentleman in this room, and two negro servants. And if," I continued, forgetting that I was in America, and rising from my chair, "you are not off as fast as you can go, I'll—" But the "gentleman" fled so precipitately with my message that I got no further.
Now could anything be more preposterous than this poor creature's attempt to vindicate his right to the flattering title conferred upon him by the Boots, and which he in turn conferred upon the Barman, until everybody in the hotel, from the Manager downwards, was involved in an absurd entanglement of mutual compliments? It may of course be laughed at as a popular humour. But a stranger like myself is perpetually recognizing the mischief which this absurd want of moral courage and self-respect in the upper classes is working in the country. Nor have Americans any grounds whatever to suppose that this sense of "courtesy" is peculiar to them. It is common to every race in the world, and most conspicuous in the lowest. The Kaffirs of Africa and the Red Indians address each other with titles almost as fulsome as "gentleman," while in India, the home of courtesy and good breeding, the natives of the higher castes address the very lowest by the title of Maharaj("great prince"). It is accepted by the recipient exactly in the spirit in which it is meant. He understands that the higher classes do not wish to offend him by calling him by his real name, and his Oriental good taste tells him that any intermediate appellation might be misconstrued. So he calls himself, as he is called, by the highest title in the land. There is no danger here of any mistake. Every one knows that the misfortune of birth or other "circumstances beyond his control" have made him a menial. But no one tells him so. He is "Maharaj."
For myself, I adopted the plan of addressing every negro servant as a "Sultan." It was not abusive and sounded well. He did not know what it meant any more than he knows the meaning of "gentleman," but I saved my self-respect by not pretending to put him on an equality with myself.
At Leadville the hotel servants are white men, and the result is civility. But I was in the humour at Leadville to be pleased with everything. The day was divine, the landscape enchanting, and the men with their rough riding-costumes, strange, home-made-looking horses, Mexican saddles (which I now for the first time saw in general use) and preposterous "stirrups," interested me immensely. Of course I went up to a mine, and, of course, went down it. And what struck me most during the expedition? Well, the sound of the wind in the pine-trees.
It was a delightful walk—away up out of the town, with its suburbs of mimic pinewood "chalets" and rough log-huts, and the hills all round sloping back from the plateau so finely, patched and powdered with snow-drifts, fringed and crowned with pine-trees, here darkened with a forest of them, there dotted with single trees, and over all, the Swiss magic of sunlight and shadow; away up the hill-side, through a wilderness of broken bottles and battered meat cans, a very paradise of rag-pickers, among which are scattered the tiny homes of the miners. Women were busy chopping wood and bringing in water. Children were romping in parties. But the men, their husbands and fathers, were all up at the mines at work, invisible, in the bowels of the mountain; keeping the kobolds company, and throwing up as they went great hillocks of rubbish behind them like some gigantic species of mole, or burrowing armadillo of the old glyptodon type. And so on, up the shingle-strewn hillside thickly studded with charred tree-stumps, desolation itself—a veritable graveyard of dead pine-trees. Above us, on the crest of the mountain, the forest was still standing, and long before we reached them we heard the wind-haunted trees of Pan telling their griefs to the hills. It is a wonderful music, this of the pine-trees, for it has fascinated every people among whom they grow, from the bear-goblin haunts of Asiatic Kurdistan through the elf-plagued forests of Germany to the spirit-land of the Canadian Indians. It is indeed a mystery, this voice in the tree-tops, with all the tones of an organ—the vox-humana stop wonderful—and in addition all the sounds of nature, from the sonorous diapason of the ocean to the whisperings of the reed-beds by the river. When I came upon them in Leadville the pines were rehearsing, I think, for a storm that was coming. Lower down the slope, the trees were standing as quiet as possible, and in the town itself at the bottom of the hill the smoke was rising straight. But up here, at the top, under the pine-trees, the first act of a tempest was in full rehearsal. And all this time wandering about, I had not seen one single living soul. There stood the sheds built over the mines. But no one was about. At the door of one of them was a cart with its horses. But no driver. This extraordinary absence of life gave the hill-top a strange solemnity—and though I knew that under my feet the earth was alive with human beings, and though every now and then a little pipe sticking out of a shed would suddenly snort and give about fifty little angry puffs at the rate of a thousand a minute, the utter solitude was so fascinating that I understood at once why pine-covered mountains, especially where mines are worked, should all the world over be such favourite sites in legend and ballad for the home of elfin and goblin folk.
The afternoon was passing before I set out homeward and I could hardly get along, so often did I turn round to look back at the views behind me. And in front, and on either side, were the hills, with their hidden hoards of silver and lead, watching the town, whence they know the miners will some day issue to attack them, and on their slopes lay mustered the shattered battalions of their pines, here looking as if invading the town, into which their skirmishers, dotted about among the houses, had already fought their way; there, as if they were retreating up the hillside with their ranks closed against the houses that pursued them, or straggling away up the slopes and over the crest in all the disorder of defeat.
And so, down on to the level of the plateau again, with its traffic and animation and all the busy life of a hardworking town.
FROM LEADVILLE TO SALT LAKE CITY.
What is the conductor of a Pullman Car?—Cannibalism fatal to lasting friendships—Starving Peter to feed Paul—Connexion between Irish cookery and Parnellism—Americans not smokers—In Denver—"The Queen City of the Plains"—Over the Rockies—Pride in a cow, and what came of it—Sage-brush—Would ostriches pay in the West?—Echo canyon—The Mormons' fortifications—Great Salt Lake in sight.
WHAT is the "conductor" of a Pullman car? Is he a private gentleman travelling for his pleasure, a duke in disguise, or is he a servant of the company placed on the cars to see to the comfort, &c., of the company's customers? I should like to know, for sometimes I have been puzzled to find out. The porter is an admirable institution, when he is amenable to reason, and I have been fortunate enough to find myself often entrusted to perfectly rational specimens. The experiences of travellers have, as I know from their books, been sometimes very different from mine—ladies, especially, complaining—but for myself I consider the Union Pacific admirably manned.
But it is a great misfortune that the company do not run hotel cars. I was told that the reason why we were made over helplessly to such caterers as those at North Platte and Sterling for our food was, that the custom of passengers is almost the only source of revenue the "eating-houses" along the line can depend upon. Without the custom of passengers they would expire—atrophise—become deceased. What I want to know is why they should not expire. I, as a traveller, see no reason whatever, no necessity, for their being kept alive at a cost of so much suffering to the company's customers. Let them decease, or else establish a claim to public support. During a long railway journey the system is temporarily deranged and appetites are irregular, so that some people can not eat when they have the opportunity, and when they could eat, do not get it. Some day, no doubt, a horrible cannibalic outrage on the cars will awaken the directors to the peril of carrying starving passengers, and the luxury of the hotel-car will be instituted.
Not that I could censure the poor men of the South Seas or Central Africa for eating each other. There seems to me something a trifle admirable in this economy of their food. But cannibalism must, in the very nature of it, be deterrent to the formation of lasting friendships between strangers. So long as two men look upon each other as possible side dishes, there can be no permanent cordiality between them. Mutual confidence, the great charm of sincere friendship, must be wanting. You could never be altogether at your ease in a company which discussed the best stuffing for you.
Meanwhile, the custom of carrying their own provisions is increasing in favour among passengers, so that, hotel cars or not, these Barmecide "eating-houses" may yet expire from inanition. The waiting (done by girls) is, I ought to say, admirable—but then so it was at Sancho Panza's supper and at Duke Humphrey's dinner-table. And yet the hungry went empty away.
Between Cheyenne and Ogden the commissariat is distinctly better, and the unprovided traveller triumphs mildly over the more careful who have carried their own provisions. But, striking a balance on the whole journey, there is no doubt that the comfort of the trip, some sixty odd hours, from Omaha to Ogden, is materially increased by starting with a private stock of food. Bitter herbs without indigestion is better than a stalled ox with dyspepsia.
An old Roman epicure gravely expressed his opinion that Africa could never be a progressive country, inasmuch as its shrimps were so small. And I think I may venture to say that if the cookery in the central States does not improve, the country must gradually drift backwards into barbarism. For there is a most intimate connexion between cookery and civilization.
It is the duty of the historian, and not the task of the traveller, to trace national catastrophes to their real causes—often to be found concealed under much adventitious matter, and when found often surprising from their insignificance—and I leave it, therefore, to others to specify the particular feature of Irish cookery that tends to create a disinclination to paying rent.
That the agitated demeanour of the after-dinner speakers during Irish tenant-right meetings' was due solely to the infuriating and ferocious course of food to which they had just submitted, is as certain as that the extraordinary class of noises, cavernous and hollow-sounding, produced by their applausive audiences was owing to the fact that they had not dined at all. In the West of Ireland (where I travelled with those "experts in constitutional treason" who were then organizing the "No Rent" agitation), the agitators and conspirators had no time for long dinners, as the mobs outside were as impatient as hunger, so they sat down, invariably, to everything at once—mutton, bacon, sausages, turkey and ham, with relays of hot potatoes every two minutes. While one conspirator was addressing the peasantry, the upper half of his body thrust out of the lower half of the window, and only his legs in the dining-room, the rest were eating against time, and as soon as the speaker's legs were seen to get up on tiptoe, which they always did for the peroration, the next to speak had to rise from his food. The result was of course incoherent violence. But a closer analysis is required to detect the causes of Irish dislike to rent.
That it would be eventually found that potatoes and patriotism have an occult affnity I have no doubt; but, as I have said above, such research more properly belongs to the province of the historian. The Spartan stirring his black broth with a spear revealed his nature at once, and the single act of the Scythians, using their beefsteaks for saddles until they wanted to eat them, gives at a glance their character to the nation.
At any rate, it is as old as Athenaeus that "to cookery we owe well-ordered States;" for States result from the congregation of individuals in towns, and towns are the sum of agglomerated households, and households, it is notorious, never combine except for the sociable consumption of food. So long as, in the Dark Ages, every man cooked for himself, or, in the primitive days of cannibalism, helped himself to a piece of a raw neighbour, there could be no friendly heartiness at meals; but, as soon as cooks appeared, men met fearlessly round a common board, towns grew up round the dinner-table, and, as Athenaeus remarks, well-ordered States grew up round the towns. But if we were to judge of the prospects of the people who live, say, about Green River or North Platte, by the character of the food (as supplied to travellers) the opinion could not be very complimentary or encouraging.
It is a prevalent idea in England that Americans smoke prodigiously, even as compared with "the average Britisher." Now, in America there is very little smoking. You may perhaps think I am wrong. A great many Americans, I allow, buy cigars in the most reckless fashion. But (apart from the fact that cigars are not necessarily tobacco) I find that as a rule they throw away more than they smoke. Speaking roughly, then, I should say so-called "smokers" in this country might be divided into three classes: those who buy cigars because they cost money; those who buy them because cigars give them a decent excuse for spitting; and those who buy them under the delusion that the friend who is with them smokes, and that hospitality or courtesy requires that they should humour his infatuation. Of the trifling residue, the men who smoke because, as they put it, "they like it," it is not worth while to speak. Now, one of the results of this general aversion to tobacco is that when a foreigner addicted to the weed comes over and tries to smoke, he is hunted about so, that (as I have often done myself) he longs to be in his coffin, if only to get a quiet corner for a pipe. In hotels they hunt you down, floor by floor, till they get you on to a level with the street, and then from room to room till they get you out on to the pavement. There is nowhere where you can read and smoke—or write and smoke—or have a quiet chat with a friend over a pipe—or in fact smoke at all, in the respectable, civilized, Christian sense of the word. Of course, if you like, you can "smoke" in the public hall of the hotel. But I would just as soon sit out on the kerbstone at the corner of the street as among a crowd of men holding cigars in their mouths and shouting business. Out on the kerbstone I should at any rate find the saving grace of passing female society. In private houses again, smokers are consigned to the knuckle end of the domicile and the waste corners thereof, as if they snatched a fearful joy from some secret fetish rites, or had to go apart into privacy to indulge in a little surreptitious cannibalism. In the streets, friends do not like you to smoke when with them, and there are very few public conveyances in which tobacco is comfortably possible.
In trains there is a most conspicuous neglect of smokers. I found, for instance, on my journey from New York to Chicago, that the only place I could smoke in was the end compartment of the fourth car from my own. That is to say, let it be as stormy and dark as it may, you have to pass from other car to the other half the length of the train, and when you do get to "the smoking compartment" you find it is only intended to hold five passengers. I confess I am surprised that these palace cars, otherwise so agreeable, should be such hovel cars for smokers. Nor, by the way, seeing that the company specially notifies that the passage from one car to the other is "dangerous" while the train is in motion, do I think it fair that smokers should be encouraged, and indeed compelled, to run bodily risks in order to arrive at their tobacco. Some day no doubt there will be Pullman smoking cars, and when there are—I will find something else to grumble at.
Imagine then my astonishment when arriving at the Windsor Hotel at Denver, I was shown into a bona-fide smoking-room, with cosy chairs, well carpeted, with a writing table properly furnished, all the newspapers of the day, and a roaring fire in an open fireplace! Here at last was civilization. Here was a room where a man might sit with self-respect, and enjoy his pipe over a newspaper, smoke while he wrote a letter, foregather over tobacco with a friend in a quiet corner! No noise of loquacious strangers, no mob of outsiders to make the room as common as the street, no fusillade of expectoration, no stove to desiccate you—above all, no coloured "gentleman" to come in and say, "Smoke nut 'lard here, sar!" I was delighted. But my curiosity, at such an aberration into intelligence, led me to confide in the manager.
"How is it," I asked, "you have got what no other hotel in America that I have stayed in has got—a comfortable smoking-room after the English style?"
"Guess," said he, "because an English company built this hotel!"
And I went upstairs, at peace with myself and all English companies.
The first view of Denver is very prepossessing, and further acquaintance begets better liking. Indeed on going into the streets of "the Queen City of the Plains" I was astonished. The buildings are of brick or stone, its roads are good and level, and well planted with shade-trees, its suburbs are orderly rows of pretty villas, adorned with lawn, and shrubs, and flowers. Though one of the very youngest towns of the West, it has already an air of solidity and permanence which is very striking, while on such a day as I saw it, it is also one of the very cleanest and airiest. And the snow-capped hills are in sight all round.
Particularly notable in Denver are its railway station—and yet, with all its size, it is found too small for the rapidly increasing requirements of the district—and the Tabor Opera-House. This is really a beautiful building inside, with its lavish upholstery, its charming "ladies' rooms," and smoking-rooms, its variety of handsome stone, its carved cherry-wood fittings, its perfectly sumptuous boxes. The stage is nearly as large as that at Her Majesty's, quite as large as any in New York, while in general appointments and in novelty of ornaments, it has very few rivals in all Europe. In one point, the beauty of the mise-en-scene from the gallery, the Denver house certainly stands quite alone, for whereas in all other theatres or opera-houses, "the gods" find themselves up in the attics, as it were, with only white-washed walls about them, and the sides of the stage shut out from view, here they are in handsomely furnished galleries, with a clear view of the whole stage over the tops of the pagoda-roofed boxes—these curious "pepper-box" roofs being themselves a handsome ornament to the scene. By having only a limited number of "stalls" on the level, sloping the "pit" up to the "grand tier," and making the stage nearly occupy the whole width of the house, everybody in the building gets an equally good view of the stage. It is indeed an opera-house to be proud of; and Denver is proud of it.
There is an idea sometimes mooted that Denver has been run on too fast; that it has "seen its day," and may be as suddenly deserted as it has been peopled. But there is absolutely no chance of this whatever. Colorado is as yet only in its cradle, and the older it gets the more substantial will Denver become, for this city—and very soon it will be almost worthy of that name—is the Paris of "the Centennial State," the ultimate ambition of the moderately successful miner. It is not a place to make your money in and leave. But having made your money, to go to and live in. For a man or woman must be very fastidious indeed who cannot be content to settle down in this, one of the prettiest and healthiest towns I have ever visited. Denver accordingly is attracting to it, year by year, a larger number of that class of citizens upon which alone the permanent prosperity of a town can depend, the men of moderate capital, satisfied with a fair return from sound investments, who put their money into local concerns, and make the place their "home."
I left Denver in the early morning. Outside the station were standing five trains all waiting to be off, and one by one their doleful bells began to toll, and one by one they sneaked away. Ours was the last to be off; but at length we too got our signal: that is to say, the porter picked up the stool which is placed on the platform for the convenience of short-legged passengers stepping into the cars—and without a word we crept off, as if the train was going to a funeral, or was ashamed of something it had done. This silent, casual departure of trains is a perpetually recurring surprise to me. Would it be contrary to republican principles to ring a bell for the warning of passengers? One result, however, of this surreptitious method of making off, is that no one is ever left behind. Such is the perversity of human nature! In England people are being perpetually "left behind" because they think such a catastrophe to be impossible. In America they are never left behind, because they are always certain they will be.
At first the country threatened a repetition of the old prairie, made more dismal than ever by our recent experiences of the Switzerland of Colorado. But the scene gradually picked up a feature here and there as we went along, and knowing that we were climbing up "the Rockies," we had always present with us the pleasures of hope. But if you wish to see the Rocky Mountains so as to respect them, do not travel over them in a train. They are a fraud, so far as they can be seen from a car window. But in minor points of interest they abound. Curious boulders, of immense size and wonderful shapes, lie strewn about the ground, all water-worn by the torrents of a long-ago age, and some of them pierced with holes—the work of primeval shell-fish. Beds of river gravel cover the slopes, and on every side were abundant vestiges of deluges, themselves antediluvian. And then we came upon isolated cliffs of red sandstone, with kranzes running along their faces—exactly the same kranzes as the Zulus made such good use of during the war—and showing in their irregular bases how old-world torrents had washed away the clay and softer materials that had once no doubt joined these isolated cliffs together into a chain of hills, and had left the sandstone heart of each hill bare and alone. And so on, up over "the Divide" into Wyoming, still a paradise for the ride and the rod, past Cheyenne, a town of many shattered hopes, and out into the region of snow again.
Our engine was perpetually screaming to the cattle to get off the track, a series of short, sharp screams that ought to have sufficed to have warned even cattle to get out of the way. As a rule they recognized the advisability of leaving the rails, but one wretched cow, whether she was deaf, or whether she was stupid, or whether, like Cole's dog, she was too proud to move, I cannot say, but in spite of the screams of the engine she held her ground and got the worst of the collision. The cow-catcher struck her, and as we passed her, the poor beast lay in the blood-mottled snow-drift at the bottom of the bank, still breathing, but almost dead. As for the train, the cow might have been only a fly.
And so we went on climbing—herds of cattle grazing on the slopes, and in the splendid "parks" which lay stretched out beneath us wherever the hills stood far apart—with frequent snow-sheds interrupting all conversation or reading with their tunnel-like intervals, till we reached the Red Granite canyon, with great masses of that splendid stone fairly mobbing the narrow course of a mountain stream, and beyond them snow—snow—snow, stretching away to the sky-line without a break. And then Sherman, the highest point of the mountains upon the whole line—only some 8000 feet though, all told—with a half-constructed monument to Oakes Ames crowning the summit. When finished, this massive cone of solid granite blocks will be sixty feet high. And then on to the Laramie Plains, with some wonderful reaches of grazing-ground, and almost fabulous records of ranching profits, And here is Laramie itself, that will some day be a city, for timber and minerals and stock will all combine to enrich it. But to-day it is desolate enough, muffed up in winter, with snowbirds in great flights flecking the white ground. And so out again into the snow wilderness, here and there cattle snuffing about on the desolate hill-sides, and snow-sheds—timber-covered ways to prevent the snow drifting on to the track—becoming more frequent, and the white desolation growing every mile more utter. And the moon got up to confuse the horizon of land with the background of the sky. And so to sleep, with dreams of the Arctic regions, and possibilities, the dreariest in the world, of being snowed up on the line.
Awakening with snow still all round us, and snow falling heavily as we reach Green River. And then out into a country, prodigiously rich, I was told, in petroleum, but in which I could only see that sage-brush was again asserting its claims to be seen above the snow-drift, and that wonderful arrangements in red stone thrust themselves up from the hill crests. Terraces reminding me of miniature table-mountains such as South Africa affects; sharply scarped pinnacles jutting from the ridges like the Mauritius peaks; plateaux with isolated piles of boulders; upright blocks shaped into the semblance of chimneys; crests broken into battlements, and—most striking mimicry of all snow wildernesses—a reproduction in natural rock of the great fortress of Deeg, in India. With snow instead of water, the imitation of that vast buttressed pile was singularly exact, and if there had been only a brazen sun overhead and a coppery sky flecked with circling kites, the counterfeit would have been perfect. But Deeg would crumble to pieces with astonishment if snow were to fall near it, while here there was enough to content a polar bear.
What a pity sage brush—the "three-toothed artemisia" of science—has no commercial value. Fortunes would be cheap if it had. But I heard at Leadville that a local chemist had treated the plant after the manner of cinchona, and extracted from its bark a febrifuge with which he was about to astonish the medical world and bankrupt quinine. That it has a valuable principle in cases of fever, its use by the Indians goes a little way to prove, while its medicinal properties are very generally vouched for by its being used in the West as an application for the cure of toothache, as a poultice for swellings, and a lotion ("sage oil") for erysipelas, rheumatism, and other ailments. Some day, perhaps, a fortune will be made out of it, but at present its chief value seems to be as a moral discipline to the settler and as covert for the sage-hen.
Would not the ostrich thrive upon some of these prodigious tracts of unalterable land? Can all America not match the African karoo shrub, which the camel-sparrow loves? Ostrich farming has some special recommendations, especially for "the sons of gentlemen" and others disinclined for arduous labour, who have not much of either money or brains to start with. Is it not a matter of common notoriety that when pursued this fowl buries its head in the sand, and thus, of course, falls an easy prey to the intending farmer? If, on the other hand, he does not want the whole of the bird, he has only to stand by and pluck its feathers out, which, having its head buried, it cannot, of course perceive. (These feathers fetch a high price in the market.) Supposing, however, that the adventurous emigrant wishes to undertake ostrich farming bona fide, he has merely to pull the birds out from the sand, and drive them into an enclosure—which he will, of course, have previously made—and sit on the gate and watch them lay their eggs. When they lay eggs, ostriches—this is also notorious—bury them in the sand and desert them, and the gentleman's son on the fence can then go and pick them out of the sand. (Ostriches' eggs fetch five pounds apiece.) These birds, moreover, cost very little for feeding, as they prefer pebbles. They can, therefore, be profitably cultivated on the sea beach. But I would remind intending farmers that ostriches are very nimble on their feet. It is also notorious that they have a shrewd way of kicking. A kick from an ostrich will break a cab-horse in two. The intending farmer, therefore, when he has compelled the foolish bird to bury its head in the sand and is plucking out its tail feathers, should stand well clear of the legs. This is a practical hint.
We dined at Evanston, neat-handed abigails, as usual, handing round dishes fearfully and wonderfully made out of old satchels and seasoned with varnish. There is a Chinese quarter here, with its curious congregation of celestial hovels all plastered over with, apparently, the labels of tea-chests. I should think the Chinese were all self-made men. At any rate they do not seem to me to have been made by any one who knew how to do it properly.
However, we had not much time to look at them, for cows on the track and one thing and another had made us rather late; so we were very soon off again, the travellers, after their hurried and indigestible meal, feeling very much like the jumping frog, after he couldn't jump, by reason of quail shot.
The snow had been gradually disappearing, and as we approached Echo canyon we found ourselves gliding into scenes that in summer are very beautiful indeed, with their turf and willow-fringed streams and abundant vegetation. And then, by gradual instalments of rock, each grander than the next, the great canyon came upon us. What a superb defile this is! It moves along like some majestic poem in a series of incomparable stanzas. There is nothing like it in the Himalayas that I know of, nor in the Suleiman range. In the Bolan Pass, on the Afghan frontier, there are intervals of equal sublimity; and even as a whole it may compare with it. But taken all for all—its length (some thirty miles), its astonishing diversity of contour, its beauty as well as its grandeur—I confess the Echo canyon is one of the masterpieces of Nature. I can speak of course only of what I have seen. I do not doubt that the Grand canyon in Arizona, which is said to throw all the wonders of Colorado and the marvels of Yellowstone or Yosemite into the shade, would dwarf the highway to Utah, but within my experience the Echo is almost incomparable. It would be very difficult to convey any idea of this glorious confusion of crags. But imagine some vast city of Cyclopean architecture built on the crest and face of gigantic cliffs of ruddy stone. Imagine, then, that ages of rain had washed away all the minor buildings, leaving only the battlements of the city, the steeples of its churches, its causeways and buttresses, and the stacks of its tallest chimneys still standing where they had been built. If you can imagine this, you can imagine anything, even Echo canyon—but I must confess that my attempt at description does not recall the scene to me in the least.
However, I passed through it and, up on the crest of a very awkward cliff for troops to scale under fire, had pointed out to me the stone-works which the Mormons built when they went out in 1857 to stop the advance of the Federal army.
And there is no doubt of it that the passage of that defile, even with such rough defences as the Saints had thrown up, would have cost the army very dear. For these stone-works, like the Afghans' sunghums, and intended, of course for cover against small arms only, were carried along the crest of the cliffs for some miles, and each group was connected with the next by a covered way, while in the bed of the stream below, ditches had been dug (some six feet deep and twenty wide), right across from cliff to cliff, and a dam constructed just beyond the first ditch which in an hour or two would have converted the whole canyon for a mile or so into a level sheet of water. On this dam the Mormon guns were masked, and though, of course, the Federal artillery would soon have knocked them off into the water, a few rounds at such a range and raking the army—clubbed as it would probably have been at the ditches—must have proved terribly effective. This position, moreover, though it could be easily turned by a force diverging to the right before it entered the canyon, could hardly be turned by one that had already entered it. And to attempt to storm those heights, with men of the calibre of the Transvaal Dutchmen holding them, would have been splendid heroism—or worse.
And then Weber canyon, with its repetitions of castellated cliffs, and its mimicry of buttress and barbican, bastion and demilune, tower and turret, and moat and keep, and all the other feudal appurtenances of the fortalice that were so dear to the author of "Kenilworth," with pine-trees climbing up the slopes all aslant, and undergrowth that in summer is full of charms. The stream has become a river, and fine meadows and corn-land lie all along its bank; large herds of cattle and companies of horses graze on the hill slopes, and wild life is abundant. Birds are flying about the valley under the supervision of buzzards that float in the air, half-mountain high, and among the willowed nooks parties of moor-hens enjoy life. And so into Ogden.
Night was closing in fast, and soon the country was in darkness. Between Ogden and the City of the Saints lay a two hours' gap of dulness, and then on a sudden I saw out in front of me a thin white line lying under the hills that shut in the valley.
"That, sir? That is Salt Lake."
THE CITY OF THE HONEY-BEE.
Zion—Deseret—A City of Two Peoples—"Work" the watchword of Mormonism—A few facts to the credit of the Saints—The text of the Edmunds Bill—In the Mormon Tabernacle—The closing scene of the Conference.
I HAVE described in my time many cities, both of the east and west; but the City of the Saints puzzles me. It is the young rival of Mecca, the Zion of the Mormons, the Latter-Day Jerusalem. It is also the City of the Honey-bee, "Deseret," and the City of the Sunflower—an encampment as of pastoral tribes, the tented capital of some Hyksos, "Shepherd Kings"—the rural seat of a modern patriarchal democracy; the place of the tabernacle of an ancient prophet-ruled Theocracy—the point round which great future perplexities for America are gathering fast; a political storm centre—"a land fresh, as it were, from the hands of God;" a beautiful Goshen of tranquility in the midst of a troublous Egypt—a city of mystery, that seems to the ignorant some Alamut or "Vulture's Nest" of an Assassin sect; the eyrie of an "Old Man of the Mountains:"—to the well-informed the Benares of a sternly pious people; the templed city of an exacting God—a place of pilgrimage in the land of promise, the home of the "Lion of Judah," and the rallying-point in the last days of the Lost Tribes, the Lamanites, the Red Indians—the capital of a Territory in which the people, though "Americans," refuse to make haste to get rich; to dig out the gold and silver which they know abounds in their mountains; to enter the world's markets as competitors in the race of commerce—a people content with solid comfort; that will not tolerate either a beggar or a millionaire within their borders, but insist on a uniform standard of substantial well-being, and devote all the surplus to "building up of Zion," to the emigration of the foreign poor and the erection of splendid places of ceremonial worship—a Territory in which the towns are all filled thick with trees and the air is sweet with the fragrance of fruit and flowers, and the voices of birds and bees as if the land was still their wild birthright; in which meadows with herds of cattle and horses are gradually overspreading deserts hitherto the wild pashalik of the tyrant sage-brush—a land, alternately, of populous champaign and of desolate sand waste, with, as its capital, a City of Two Peoples between whom there is a bitterness of animosity, such as, in far-off Persia, even Sunni and Shea hardly know.
Indeed, there are so many sides to Salt Lake City, and so much that might be said of each, that I should perhaps have shirked this part of my experiences altogether were I not conscious of possessing, at any rate, one advantage over all my "Gentile" predecessors who have written of this Mecca of the West. For it was my good fortune to be entertained as a guest in the household of a prominent Mormon Apostle, a polygamist, and in this way to have had opportunities for the frankest conversation with many of the leading Mormons of the territory. My candidly avowed antipathy to polygamy made no difference anywhere I went, for they extended to me the same confidence that they would have done to any Gentile who cared to know the real facts.
In the ordinary way, I should begin by describing the City itself. But even then, so subtle is the charm of this place—Oriental in its general appearance, English in its details—that I should hesitate to attempt description. Its quaint disregard of that "fine appearance" which makes your "live" towns so commonplace; its extravagance in streets condoned by ample shade-trees; its sluices gurgling along by the side-walks; its astonishing quiet; the simple, neighbourly life of the citizens—all these, and much more combine to invest Salt Lake City with the mystery that is in itself a charm.
Speaking merely as a traveller, and classifying the towns which I have seen, I would place the Mormon Zion in the same genus as Benares on the Ganges and Shikarpoor in Sinde, for it attracts the visitor by interests that are in great part intellectual. The mind and eye are captivated together. It is a fascination of the imagination as well as of the senses. For the capital of Utah is not one of Nature's favourites. She has hemmed it in with majestic mountains, but they are barren and severe. She has spread the levels of a great lake, but its waters are bitter, Marah. There is none of the tender grace of English landscape, none of the fierce splendour of the tropics; and yet, in spite of Nature, the valley is already beautiful, and in the years to come may be another Palmyra. As yet, however, it is the day of small things. Many of the houses are still of adobe, and they overlook the trees planted to shade them. Wild flowers still grow alongside the track of the tram-cars, and wild birds perch to whistle on the telephone wires in the business thoroughfares.
But the future is full of promise, for the prosperity of the city is based upon the most solid of all foundations, agricultural wealth, and it is inhabited by a people whose religion is work. For it is a fact about Mormonism which I have not yet seen insisted upon, that the first duty it teaches is work, and that it inculcates industry as one of the supreme virtues.
The result is that there are no pauper Mormons, for there are no idle ones. In the daytime there are no loafers in the streets, for every man is afield or at his work, and soon after nine at night the whole city seems to be gone to bed. A few strangers of course are hanging about the saloon doors, but the pervading stillness and the emptiness of the streets is dispiriting to rowdyism, and so the Gentile damns the place as being "dull." But the truth is that the Mormons are too busy during the day for idleness to find companionship at night, and too sober in their pleasures for gaslight vices to attract them.
As a natural corollary to this life of hard work, it follows that the Mormons are in a large measure indifferent to the affairs of the world outside themselves. Minding their own business keeps them from meddling with that of others. They are, indeed, taught this from the pulpit. For it is the regular formula of the Tabernacle that the people should go about their daily work, attend to that, and leave everything else alone. They are never to forget that they are "building up Zion," that their day is coming in good time, but that meanwhile they must work "and never bother about what other people may be doing." In this way Salt Lake City has become a City of Two Peoples, and though Mormon and Gentile may be stirred up together sometimes, they do not mingle any more than oil and water.
There are no paupers among the Mormons, and 95 per cent of them live in their own houses on their own land; there is no "caste" of priesthood, such as the world supposes, inasmuch as every intelligent man is a priest, and liable at any moment to be called upon to undertake the duties of the priests of other churches—but without any pay.
Last winter there was a census taken of the Utah Penitentiary and the Salt Lake City and county prisons with the following result:—In Salt Lake City there are about 75 Mormons to 25 non-Mormons: in Salt Lake county there are about 80 Mormons to 20 non-Mormons. Yet in the city prison there were 29 convicts, all non-Mormons; in the county prison there were 6 convicts all non-Mormons. The jailer stated that the county convicts for the five years past were all anti-Mormons except three!
In Utah the proportion of Mormons to all others is as 83 to 17. In the Utah Penitentiary at the date of the census there were 51 prisoners, only 5 of whom were Mormons, and 2 of the 5 were in prison for polygamy, so that the 17 per cent "outsiders" had 46 convicts in the penitentiary, while the 83 per cent. Mormons had but 5!
Out of the 200 saloon, billiard, bowling alley and pool-table keepers not over a dozen even profess to be Mormons. All of the bagnios and other disreputable concerns in the territory are run and sustained by non-Mormons. Ninety-eight per cent of the gamblers in Utah are of the same element. Ninety-five per cent of the Utah lawyers are Gentiles, and 98 per cent of all the litigation there is of outside growth and promotion. Of the 250 towns and villages in Utah, over 200 have no "gaudy sepulchre of departed virtue," and these two hundred and odd towns are almost exclusively Mormon in population. Of the suicides committed in Utah ninety odd per cent are non-Mormon, and of the Utah homicides and infanticides over 80 per cent are perpetrated by the 17 per cent of "outsiders."
The arrests made in Salt Lake City from January 1, 1881, to December 8, 1881, were classified as follows:—
A number of the Mormon arrests were for chicken, cow, and water trespass, petty larceny, &c. The arrests of non-Mormons were 80 per cent for prostitution, gambling, exposing of person, drunkenness, unlawful dram-selling, assault and battery, attempt to kill, &c.
Now, if the 75 per cent Mormon population of Salt Lake City were as lawless and corrupt as the record shows the 25 per cent non-Mormons to be, there would have been 2443 arrests made from their ranks during the year 1881, instead of 169; while if the 25 per cent non-Mormon population were as law-abiding and moral as the 75 per cent Mormons, instead of 851 non-Mormon arrests during the year, there would have been but 56!
These are the kind of statistics that non-Mormons in Salt Lake City hate having published. But the world ought to know them, if only to put to shame the so-called Christian community of Utah, that is never tired of libelling, personally and even by name, the men and women whom Mormons have learned to respect from a lifetime's experience of the integrity of their conduct and the purity of their lives—the so-called "Christian" community that is afraid to hear itself contrasted with these same Mormons, lest the shocking balance of crime and immorality against themselves should be publicly known. But there is no appeal from these statistics. They are incontrovertible.
The time at which I arrived in Utah was a very critical one for the Latter-Day Saints. The States, exasperated into activity by sectarian agitation—and by the intrigues of a few Gentiles resident in Utah who were financially interested in the transfer of the Territorial Treasury from Mormon hands to their own—had just determined, once more, to extirpate polygamy, and the final passage of the long-dreaded "Edmunds Bill" had marked down Mormons as a proscribed people, and had indicted the whole community for a common offence.
The following is the text of this remarkable bill:—
"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That section 5352 of the Revised Statutes of the United States be, and the same is hereby, amended so as to read as follows, namely:
"Every person who has a husband or wife living who, in a territory or other place over which the United States have exclusive jurisdiction, hereafter marries another, whether married or single, and any man who hereafter simultaneously, or on the same day, marries more than one woman, in a territory or other place over which the United States have exclusive jurisdiction, is guilty of polygamy, and shall be punished by a fine of not more than $500 and by imprisonment for a term of not more than five years; but this section shall not extend to any person by reason of any former marriage whose husband or wife by such marriage shall have been absent for five successive years, and is not known to such person to be living, and is believed by such person to be dead, nor to any person by reason of any former marriage which shall have been dissolved by a valid decree of a competent court, nor to any person by reason of any former marriage which shall have been pronounced void by a valid decree of a competent court, on the ground of nullity of the marriage contract.
"SEC. 2—That the foregoing provisions shall not affect the prosecution or punishment of any offence already committed against the section amended by the first section of this act.
"SEC. 3—That if any male person, in a territory or other place over which the United States have exclusive jurisdiction, hereafter cohabits with more than one woman, he shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanour, and on conviction thereof, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $300, or by imprisonment for not more than six months, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
"SEC. 4—That counts for any or all of the offences named in sections one and two of this act may be joined in the same information or indictment.
"SEC. 5—That in any prosecution for bigamy, polygamy, or unlawful cohabitation, under any statute of the United States, it shall be sufficient cause of challenge to any person drawn or summoned as a juryman or talesman, first, that he is or has been living in the practice of bigamy, polygamy or unlawful cohabitation with more than one woman, or that he is or has been guilty of an offence punishable by either of the foregoing sections, or by section 5352 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, or the Act of July 1st, 1862, entitled, 'An Act to punish and prevent the practice of polygamy in the territories of the United States and other places, and disapproving and annulling certain Acts of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah;' or second, that he believes it right for a man to have more than one living and undivorced wife at the same time, or to live in the practice of cohabiting with more than one woman; and any person appearing or offered as a juror or talesman, and challenged on either of the foregoing grounds, may be questioned on his oath as to the existence of any such cause of challenge, and other evidence may be introduced bearing upon the question raised by such challenge; and this question shall be tried by the court. But as to the first ground of challenge before mentioned, the person challenged shall not be bound to answer if he shall say upon his oath that he declines on the ground that his answer may tend to criminate himself; and if he shall answer as to said first ground, his answer shall not be given in evidence in any criminal prosecution against him for any offence named in sections one or three of this Act; but if he declines to answer on any ground, he shall be rejected as incompetent.
"SEC. 6—That the President is hereby authorized to grant amnesty to such classes of offenders, guilty before the passage of this act of bigamy, polygamy, or unlawful cohabitation, on such conditions and under such limitations as he shall think proper; but no such amnesty shall have effect unless the conditions thereof shall be complied with.
"SEC. 7—That the issue of bigamous or polygamous marriages, known as Mormon marriages, in cases in which such marriages have been solemnized according to the ceremonies of the Mormon sect, in any territory of the United States, and such issue shall have been born before the 1st January, A.D. 1883, are hereby legitimated.
"SEC. 8—That no polygamist, bigamist, or any person cohabiting with more than one woman, and no woman cohabiting with any of the persons described as aforesaid in this section, in any territory or other place over which the United States have exclusive jurisdiction, shall be entitled to vote at any election held in any such territory or other place, or be eligible for election or appointment to or be entitled to hold any office or place of public trust, honour, or emolument in, under, or for any such territory or place, or under the United States.
"SEC. 9—That all the registration and election offices of every description in the Territory of Utah are hereby declared vacant, and each and every duty relating to the registration of voters, the conduct of elections, the receiving or rejection of votes, and the canvassing and returning of the same, and the issuing of certificates or other evidence of election in said territory, shall, until other provision be made by the Legislative Assembly of said territory as is hereinafter by this section provided, be performed under the existing laws of the United States and of said territory by proper persons, who shall be appointed to execute such offices and perform such duties by a board of five persons, to be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, not more than three of whom shall be members of one political party, a majority of whom shall be a quorum. The canvass and return of all the votes at elections in said territory for members of the Legislative Assembly thereof shall also be returned to said board, which shall canvass all such returns and issue certificates of election to those persons who, being eligible for such election, shall appear to have been lawfully elected, which certificates shall be the only evidence of the right of such persons to sit in such Assembly, provided said board of five persons shall not exclude any persons otherwise eligible to vote from the polls, on account of any opinion such person may entertain on the subject of bigamy or polygamy; nor shall they refuse to count any such vote on account of the opinion of the person casting it on the subject of bigamy or polygamy; but each house of such Assembly, after its organization, shall have power to decide upon the elections and qualifications of its members."