LIGHTS AND SIDELIGHTS

[2]Four of their number had died, and only one reached home.

Four of their number had died, and only one reached home.

99LIGHTS AND SIDELIGHTS

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I love thy rocks and rills,Thy woods and templed hills,My heart with rapture thrills.

––Smith.

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LIGHTS AND SIDELIGHTS

The Old Oregon Trail takes bold way through some of the very finest scenery of the West. These new ships of the desert, the passenger trains, glide gracefully down from the aerial highways of the mountain passes into the heart of our fertile oases. Whichever way the traveler turns he sees something absolutely new, and often in strange contrast with what he has just been beholding. Stately, snow-crowned giants of the lordly hills, fir-fringed up to timber line, stand motherlike, or bishoplike, crozier-cragged, shepherding the verdant uplands and the velvety valleys whose billowy meadows bend beneath the highland zephyrs or fall before the scythe of the prospering farmer. Now he beholds the ruggedest of capacious cañons where the rollicking rivers and rhythmic rills have cut great gorges deep into the rocky ribs of the tightly hugging hills. Another turn and he sees the hearty herds transforming themselves automatically into gold for their102happy owners; another turn shows the lazy rivers arising from their age-long beds and mossy couches to climb the hot hillsides and to toil and sweat at the command of the lord of this world, as they irrigate his arid acres. Yet another turn and the wrathful river is carrying on its breast the tens of thousands of winter-cut logs dancing like straws on its frothy surface on their way to the busy mills; and the turbulent streams, their wildness tamed and harnessed, serve the needs of man like trusted domestic servants.

But this is not the way to view mountains; it is only surface sights we get in this manner. He who would know the beauties of the hills must become acquainted with them personallyand on foot. Anyone can enjoy the lazy luxury of the cozy precincts of an upholstered, porter-served car. He may travel horseback or donkey-back, if he cares to visit only where such sure-footed animals can go. However, when I want to see the stately things among the unchiseled palaces and temples where Nature pays homage in the courts of the Divine Architect, I dismiss all modes of conveyance, and103with well-nailed shoes, rough clothes, a staff, and a lunch, I take the kingdom by force. When once in, I am royally entertained; for though coy and apparently hard to woo, Nature is a most delightful companion when once you are acquainted.

The distant mountains, that uprearTheir solid bastions to the skies,Are crossed by pathways, that appearAs we to higher levels rise.

So sang Longfellow. Bishop Warren said that every peak tempted him as with a beckoning finger, daring him to a climb.

To those who have never been nearer the unlocked fastnesses of our eternal American hills than by the too common means above mentioned, the far-away cliffs of marble or white granite, with their areas of unmeltable snows and ices, look temptingly down on us in August, together with the smaller and less inspiring crags. But when we approach them, even those nearest, how they appear to recede––almost to run away! The high peaks that looked as though climbing up and peeping over the heads of the lower ones, either jump down and104bashfully run to hide, or the little ones rise up to protect them. So it seems as one approaches.

Entering the mountain side by way of a yawning cañon we soon come to a sheer precipice lying in a deep gorge with perpendicular sides, while, leaping from the top of the declivity high above our heads, as if from the very zenith, a stream of crystal water cleaves the air. It is dashed into countless strands of silvery pearls before it reaches the deep bed of moss spread down to receive it, and where it lies resting awhile for its downward journey toward the moon-whipped ocean.

Ah, Longfellow! You have taught us how to climb some mountains, but here we have to construct our ladders, for anyone less sure of foot than the chamois or the mountain sheep must stay at the bottom of the falls. Scylla and Charybdis are stationary now, and the gaping chasm has swallowed us upward, where we reach an opening into a wide park, a veritable fairyland. On the top of one of those ponderous laminations tilted edgewise is the king of the gnomes of the new glen. We call him105Pharaoh. How archly he looks out over his wide domain! His kingly cap is adorned with a cobra ready to strike, yet out on his ample breast floats a most royal but un-Pharonic beard. This is one of the ways the quondam haughty hills have of providing entertainment for the bold questioner and visitor.

The scenery is always new. High rocks, whose rugged faces look as if their titanic architect had been surprised and driven away while as yet his task was not half completed; long gaping gulches lined with an evergreen decoration of spruce, cedar, manzanita, and mountain mahogany, are some of the sidelights to be found in a day’s journey in the realms adjacent to the Old Oregon Trail.

107THE STAGECOACH

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My high-blown prideAt length broke under me and now has left me,Weary and old with service, to the mercyOf a rude stream, that must forever hide me.

––Shakespeare.

Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens.... When I was at home I was in a better place; but travelers must be content.––Shakespeare.

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THE STAGECOACH

At frequent intervals throughout the widening West may be seen the relegated ship of the desert standing forlorn, friendless, forsaken. The merciless claws of summer and the icy fangs of winter are loosening the red paint, and the white canvas cover and side curtains are flapping in the winds. The tired tongue, dumb with age and years of use, still tells tales of hardships by the silent eloquence of its multitude of unhealed scars.

This class of carryall was at once unique and supreme. It was the one indispensable link in the endless chain of evolution popular and powerful, the only public agent of the Trail and the plains until the unconquerable initiative of the lord of the world had time to steel a highway with trackage for more rapid transit. What a living link was that old overland stage! To look upon an isolated and abandoned relic of earlier pioneerdom is like standing at the marble monument110of some human pivot in the mighty march of man’s progress. Before the bold and bustling railway noisily elbowed its way into the affections of travel and commerce and pushed aside the patient wagon of the nation-builders, the tens of thousands of hurried travelers enjoyed (or endured) the hospitality of its rocking thorough-braces as they, hour by hour, day after day, and night after night, and even week after week in the longer journeys, sat atop or inside this leviathan of the sand-ocean making the most rapid trip possible and under safe guidance.

Could such old hulk tell its story, could that dried-up old tongue but begin to wag again, what tales! First would come those of the men too often overworked and underappreciated, like our modern railmen, the drivers of the stage. These, as the ancient Jehu, were compelled to drive furiously on occasion, in order to keep a cramped schedule or make up for the loss of time brought about by a breakdown, a washout, or some Indian depredation. Few drivers there were who did not love their work. It came to be a saying, “Once a driver, always111a driver.” The coach-and-four, or more, with booted and belted man on the throne of the swinging chariot, made every boy envious and created in him a desire to become great some day too. Eagle and Dick, Tom and Rock, Bolly and Bill understood the snap of the whip, or its more wicked crack, as well as they did the tension of the line or the word of the chief charioteer, who, with foot on the long brake-beam, regulated the speed of the often crowded vehicle down the precipitous places which to the novice looked very dangerous. But Jehu is no longer universal king. A Pharaoh who knew him not has heartlessly and definitely usurped some of his places.

In the boot of this old seaworthy craft was hauled many a load of treasure, for the gold-hungry prospector without sextant and chain surveyed the fastnesses of the hills as well as the illimitation of the prairies, and a care-taking government made a way to his camp to send him his mail. Express companies joined their traffic to that of Uncle Sam, and he of the pick and shovel became the lodestone to popular convenience. With many a load of treasure went112a man known as a messenger, who sat beside the driver, carrying a sawed-off gun under his coat, ready to meet the gangster or holdup, who so often robbed both stage and passenger.

In the hold of this old coach have ridden governors, statesmen of all grades, men and women, good and better (some bad and worse); here were bridal tours, funeral parties, commercial men and gamblers, miners and prospectors, Chinamen and Indians, pleasure-seekers and labor-hunters, officers and convicts.

Men of every stationIn the eye of fame,On a common levelComing to the same––

is the way Saxe punningly puts it; but more of a leveler was this old coach, for there was of necessity the forceful putting of people of the most heterogeneous character together in the most homogeneous manner as the omnibus (most literal word here), made up its hashy load at the hand and command of the driver, whose word was unappealable law as complete as that113of another captain on the high seas. Prodigal, profligate, and pure, maiden or Magdalene, millionaire or Lazarus, all were crowded together as the needs of the hour and the size of the passengers demanded, to sit elbow to elbow, side by side to the journey’s end.

Huddled thus, they traveled unchanged till the stage station was reached; here the horses were exchanged for fresher ones; the wayside inn had its tables of provisions varying and varied as the region traversed. If in the mountains, there were likely to be trout, saddle of deer, steaks of bear; but if through the sands, there was provided bacon or other coarser fare. Usually these crowds were joking and jolly, unless tempered by something requiring more sobriety, but always optimistic, for the fellow who became grouchy the while had generally abundant occasion to repent and mend his ways.

One day, on a road not far from where this is being written, the old coach was toiling up a long mountainside; the driver was drowsy and the passengers had exhausted their newest répertoire of stories114and had lapsed into stillness such as often seizes a squeezed crowd. The horses were permitted to take their time; the dust was deep, the sun hot, and all possible stillness prevailed.

“Halt!” ordered a low voice very near the road.

The driver, Tom Myers, did not understand the command, and simply looked up, half asleep, and said to the horses, “Gid-dap!”

“Halt!” came the words again, louder and unmistakable.

Myers halted. Standing at the end of an elongated bunch of pines where he had been invisible until the heads of the horses appeared stood the highwayman, with menacing gun covering the head of the driver.

“Throw out your treasure and mail!” came the command.

“I have mail, but no treasure,” said my friend Tom, as he afterward pointed out the spot and told the story. “Come and get it.”

The lone robber rifled the sacks, turned the pockets of the travelers inside out, and115bade them drive on without imitating Lot’s wife; he was never caught.

To be sure, this is a tame story, and many readers doubtless can tell one more thrilling; but this one is true.

The stagecoach is a thing of the past, but we still have the hardy, dust-covered, mud-daubed teamster, who yet must haul the freight far back into hills where for ages there will be no railway. To these, Godspeed and good cheer! They live by the Trails; they eat at the wheel; they sleep under the wagon; they are kindly and obliging even when their heavily belled teams of six to fourteen or more head of horses meet another loaded caravan in some narrow pass where the highest engineering ability is needed to get by in safety; and they never leave a fellow-traveler in distress.

117AMONG THE HILLS

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To him who in the love of Nature, holdsCommunion with her visible forms, she speaksA various language;...The hillsRock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun.

––Bryant.

Not vainly did the early Persian makeHis altar the high places and the peakOf earth-o’ergazing mountains, and thus takeA fit and unwalled temple, there to seekThe Spirit, in whose honor shrines are weak,Upreared of human hands.... compareColumns and idol-dwellings, Goth or GreekWith Nature’s realm of worship.

––Byron.

119THE MOTHER DEER

The ragged sky-line high in airSits boundary to sightAnd seems to end the world;But topping it by way well worn by braverpioneer,A fertile, home-filled dale is foundWhere love holds warm,And schools and churches dot the land.But while the slow-drawn old stagecoachWith load of dust-clad travelersCrawls over jolting, stone-filled ruts,The puffing beasts, sweat-covered,Winding in and out among the statelypines(Where friendly Nature spreads her yellowmossO’er bleaching arms long since deprived oflife),May now be seen a mother deerHalf hidden ’mong the sloping boughs;Alert, ears high, eyes wide, body so tenseAnd motionless. In silence all120The passengers admire the instinct-loveWhich not affrights the spotted babeFast sleeping at her feet.“There are no guns aboard!” says one.“But if there were, how could one’s heartBe hard enough to murder mother-love?”Said I.

121THE SHEPHERD

The tired shepherd stands among his ewesThat with their lambs are unafraidOf him and keen-eyed dogs;They crouch close in about his feetWhene’er the coyote’s cryOr bear’s low growlFalls tingling on the timid ear.Himself thrusts gun to elbow-placeAnd peers amid the dust-dressed sageAnd scented chaparral so dense,To glimpse the fiery eyeballsOf the prowler of the hills;While all awatch the faithful collies standPrepared to fend e’en with their livesThe young and helpless not their own.

122THE FEATHERED DRUMMER

The wooded thicket holds a drum.The air in springtime afternoonsIs filled with sharp staccato notesWhose echoes clear reverberateFrom precipice and timbered hills.No fifer plays accompaniment;No pageant proud or marching throngKeeps step to this deep pulsing bassWhose sullen solo booms afar.A double challenge is this gage,A gauntlet flung for love or war;As strutting barnyard chanticleerDefies his neighboring lord:So calls this crested pheasant-kingFor combat or for peace.The meek brown mate upon her nestFeels happy and secureWhile thus her lord by deed and wordDisplays his woodland braveryAnd guards their little home.

123MORMONDOM

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That fellow seems to possess but one idea, and that is the wrong one.––Samuel Johnson.

Utah is harder than China.––Bishop Wiley.

Utah is the hardest soil into which the Methodist plowshare was ever set.––Bishop Fowler.

125THE TRAIL OF THE MORMON

By the Trail had gone Jason Lee, in 1834, to plant the sturdy oak of Methodism in the Willamette Valley and the north Pacific Coast. His task was nobly done; the developments of to-day attest the wisdom of the church in sending him and his coequal coadjutors, Daniel Lee, Cyrus Shepherd, and P. L. Edwards.

Over this same track went Marcus Whitman, in 1835, to found the mission at Waiilatpu, near the present site of Walla Walla, and to find there the early grave of honorable martyrdom at the hands of the people he was attempting to save. The call to these two intrepid equals, Lee and Whitman, came through the visit of the two young Indian chiefs who, immediately after the expedition of Lewis and Clark, had gone to Saint Louis to obtain a copy of the “white man’s Book of heaven.” The names of these two, as previously stated,126were Hee-oh’ks-te-kin and H’co-a-h’co-a-cotes-min.

On the sixth day of April, 1830, in Kirkland, Ohio, Joseph Smith, Jr., had organized the body best known as the Mormon Church. Fourteen years later he was mercilessly, and unjustly, mobbed at Nauvoo, Illinois, and after three more years of drifting about from pillar to post, the Latter-Day Saints prepared to emigrate to upper California under the absolute domination and guidance of Brigham Young, who was often styled the successor to the “Mohammed of the West,” as Joseph Smith was sometimes called. This cult had some queer traits. W. W. Phelps, one of their more prominent members, thus characterized the leaders of Mormondom: Brigham Young, the Lion of the Lord; P. P. Pratt, the Archer of Paradise; O. Hyde, the Olive Branch of Israel; W. Richards, the Keeper of the Rolls; J. Taylor, Champion of Right; W. Smith, the Patriarchal Jacob’s Staff; W. Woodruff, the Banner of the Gospel; G. A. Smith, the Entablature of Truth; O. Pratt, the Gauge of Philosophy; J. E. Page, the Sun Dial; L. Wright, Wild Mountain Ram.

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Expelled from Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri, the trembling Saints sought less turbulent surroundings by immersing their all in the wild conditions both of men and wilderness in the untamed lands of the great West. They were not able to sustain the physical cost of the trek of more than a thousand miles under the hardest of circumstances. The Trail was the home of the Sioux, the Cheyennes, the Arapahoes, the Otoes, Omahas, Utes, and others, who knew neither law nor mercy. The waters were often alkaline and deadly as Lethe. A thousand miles afoot was the record some had to make. They appealed to the government, then at war with Mexico, to permit a number of their men to enlist as soldiers to be marched over the ancient Santa Fe Trail, and thus be able to draw wages on the journey. This was granted. These recruits had little, if anything, to do, but they are known in history as the Mormon battalion. They went to California, 1847-49, and were present when James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill.

In 1847, July 24, Mormondom threw up its first trenches in the valley of the Great128Salt Lake, as that saline body was then known and recorded. In this salubrious region was planted the analogy of the harem of Mohammed, and the seraglio of Brigham became the center of the sensual system of the Latter-Day Saints. So blatant was the apostle Heber Kimball that he said he himself had enough wives to whip the soldiers of the United States.

Evangelical Christianity waited almost twenty years before an attempt was made to plant the high standards of Christendom in the Wahsatch Mountains. In the sixties went the denominations in the order here named: Congregational, Protestant Episcopal, Methodist Episcopal; in 1871 the Presbyterians went, and then the Baptists. It was dark. Mighty night had beclouded the intellect and obscured the spiritual senses; civilized sensuality swayed with unchecked hand the destinies of the masses. The blinded people groped for light in the pitchlike blackness of the new superstition.

“None but Americans on guard” in such a night! Hear the roll call. None but tried and true Christian soldiers were129mounted on those ramparts: Erastus Smith, the heart-winner; Thomas Wentworth Lincoln, the scholarly but quiet Grand Army man, who always kept his patriotic fires banked; George Ellis Jayne, another veteran of the Civil War, tireless evangelist who possibly saw more Mormons made Christian than any other pastor of any church in Utah; George Marshall Jeffrey, eternally at it; Joseph Wilks, methodic, patient, sunny; Martinus Nelson, weeping over the straying of his Norwegians; Emil E. Mörk, rugged and steadfast; Martin Anderson and Samuel Hooper, both of whom died by the Trail, falling at the “post of honor.” Last, but not least of these to be named, stands the energetic and “Boanergetic” Thomas Corwin Iliff, that Buckeye stentor and patriot, who with heart-thrilling tones has raised millions of dollars in aiding and in establishing hundreds and hundreds of churches in these United States. For thirty years he commanded the Methodist as well as the patriotic redoubts of Utah and bearded the “Lion of the Lord” in his very den.

But there were never truer watchmen on130the high-towered battlements of the real Zion than the Protestant Episcopal Bishop, Daniel S. Tuttle; the knightly Hawkes of the Congregationalists; the truly apostolic Baptist, Steelman; the Presbyterian leaders––who surpasses them? See the saintly Wishard, the polemic McNiece and McLain; the scholarly and tireless Paden!

They were loyal to the core, commanding the Christian forces as they deployed, enfiladed, charged, marched, and stormed the trenches of religious libertinism in the fertile and paradisaical valleys and roomy cañons of the Mormon state of Deseret. These never surrendered, compromised, or retreated.

Glorious Brotherhood! Permit us the honor of saluting you. Your like may never march abreast again in any campaign! Living, you were conquerors; dying, you are heroes.

Of these above named Messrs. Hooper, Anderson, Steelman, and McNiece have entered the “snow-white tents” of the other shore.

131SOME MORMON BELIEFS

His studie was but litel on the Bible.––Chaucer.

Imaginations fearfully absurd,Hobgoblin rites, and moon-struck reveries,Distracted creeds, and visionary dreams,More bodiless and hideously misshapenThan ever fancy, at the noon of night,Playing at will, framed in the madman’s brain.

––Pollok, in Course of Time.

The abode of the dead, where they remained in full consciousness of their condition for indefinable periods, or even for eternity, has been the theme of many a writer both before and after the advent of the Saviour of men. Annihilation is repugnant to the common intelligence. Homer sends Ulysses, Dantelike, to the realms of the dead, where he converses with them he had known in life. The Stygian River, the dumb servitor, Charon, the coin-paid fare, are all well known in the classics of the ancients.

In some later religio-philosophic studies132the names are different; some have tartarus, some purgatory, some paradise. The last is the name adopted by the Mormons.

The heroes of Homer seemed never to hope for a release from the bonds of Hades. Voluptuous Circe, the Odysseyan swine-maker, told the hero of those tales he was a daring one:

“... who, yet alive, have goneDown to the abode of Pluto; twice to dieIs yours, while others die but once.”

Many well meaning minds have tried to discover in the Bible, or otherwise reasonably invent a second probation for the unrepentant as an addendum to the final resurrection of the just. Not a little has been made of the term “spirits in prison” (1 Pet. 3. 19, 20), and of “baptism for the dead” (1 Cor. 15. 29). In the intensity of zeal, or as a proselyting advertisement, the Latter-Day Saints proclaim the possibility of all the inhabitants of the grave (paradise) being saved in heaven. To this end, early in the history of the organization, there was implanted the doctrine of preaching to the departed and that of proxy ministrations.

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From their Articles of Faith I take these two:

3. We believe that through the atonement of Christ all mankind may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel.4. We believe that these ordinances are: First, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.

3. We believe that through the atonement of Christ all mankind may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel.

4. We believe that these ordinances are: First, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.

Now, since without immersion there is no remission of sins, and since they who are in prison (paradise) are eligible to salvation, therefore some one must be baptized for them and have all the other rites of the plan likewise administered in their name. That “all things may be done decently and in order,” there was received a “revelation” to the end that temples must be built, recorders and other officials appointed, and all the paraphernalia necessary for the work prepared. When these rites are consummated some elder of the church who dies goes to the spiritual prison house and tells the people therein confined that these most meritorious works have been done for them on earth; in fact,134this is the chief reason for their going thither. They who will believe this story and repent of their sins are then and there entitled to “a right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.”

Not only are the people redeemed from all their sins by the pious ministrations of the many temple-workers, who, like Samuel, continually serve and minister therein, but as marriage relations are to continue throughout the endless ages of eternity, and children are to be born forever and ever, these dead have the hymeneal ceremony performed “for eternity”; this act is known as the “sealing” process. Men are here married––by proxy––to others than the actual living wife, sometimes with her consent, sometimes without it. One old gentleman, whose name is not to be mentioned, was sealed thus for eternity to Martha Washington and to Empress Josephine. It sounds farcical and foolish in the extreme; fit only to be counted as a silly joke, unworthy the attention of a sane soul for a minute; but it is terribly sober when it is remembered that there are hundreds of135thousands of innocent, honest, and unsuspecting Mormons who really and truly believe this to be the only road to eternal life and exaltation.

Added to this is the doctrine of the deification of men. All the true and faithful Mormons are to become gods by and by, and create and populate new worlds; hence the value of polygamy; in fact, this world is but one of the samples of this truth. Adam is the owner and ruler of earth, and to him we pray. He is our God. As such he is only one in an endless procession of such beings.

“There has been and there now exists an endless procession of the Gods, stretching back into the eternities, that had no beginning and will have no end. Their existence runs parallel with endless duration, and their dominions are limitless as boundless space.”[3]

Possibly the most popular hymn among these people is the following, written by one of the wives of Joseph Smith, Eliza R. Snow. It is in their collection and now in use:

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HYMN TO FATHER AND MOTHER

O my Father, thou that dwellestIn the high and glorious place!When shall I regain thy presence,And again behold thy face?In thy holy habitation,Did my spirit once reside?In my first primeval childhood,Was I nurtured by thy side?For a wise and glorious purposeThou hast placed me here on earth,And withheld the recollectionOf my former friends and birth;Yet ofttimes a secret somethingWhispered, “You’re a stranger here”;And I felt that I had wanderedFrom a more exalted sphere.I had learned to call thee Father,Through thy Spirit from on high;But, until the Key of KnowledgeWas restored, I knew not why.In the heavens are parents single?No; the thought makes reason stare!Truth is reason; truth eternalTells me, I’ve a mother there.When I leave this frail existence,When I lay this mortal by,Father, mother, may I meet youIn your royal court on high?137Then, at length, when I’ve completedAll you sent me forth to do,With your mutual approbationLet me come and dwell with you.

[3]New Witness for God, B. H. Roberts, 1895.

New Witness for God, B. H. Roberts, 1895.

138WEBER TOM, UTE POLYGAMIST

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mindSees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;His soul proud Science never taught to strayFar as the solar walk or milky way.

––Pope.

When Mormonism was no longer compelled to maintain the defensive it quickly assumed the offensive. This was apparently deemed necessary for the existence of the system. Two kinds of preaching were indulged in by the elders on their missions, home and foreign. At home they declared the beauty of the Smithian gospel, including the doctrine of polygamy, a sweet morsel for the blood-thirsty Utes. They were trying by every means, Machiavellian or otherwise, to gain the Lamanites, as Indians were called by the Mormons, at least to an extent which would allow them to remain undisturbed throughout the territory of Utah. Old Kanosh and other leaders were immersed for the remission of their sins,139but they were permitted to multiply unto themselves as many squaws as they cared for. It would take water stronger than the common alkaline pools contained to reach the morals of a heathen Ute.

Very many of the Indians thus were made Mormons and white men were appointed as their bishops. Brigham Young used to make visits to them to try to instruct them in various things. For a considerable period he was the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory. He was such official at the time of the lamentable Mountain Meadow Massacre, in 1857, and for which crime Bishop John D. Lee suffered death.

Possibly it was the influence of Mr. Young that kept the most of the red men from the warpath and thus saved the scattered settlers in the earlier days when there were so few to guard the isolated homes in the far-away nooks and cañons of the mountains.

The other sort of preaching in which the elders indulged was that of an absolute and unqualified denial of polygamy in Utah. Such was the plan of the elders who went140to Europe. The public denial of John Taylor, later president of the church, is abundant evidence. When they deny polygamy now they have the consistency of definition to back them; to their manner of explaining, polygamy is the act of taking new wives; to the non-Mormon, polygamy is the possessing of more than one wife. For this reason we are very bold in saying that polygamy is publicly practiced in Utah––witness Joseph F. Smith as chief example.

Although we may read of it, none can comprehend just what it means to a girl-wife, two thousand miles away from her parents, to be treated as an alien, in a land under the flag of the free. This was the case in the strictly Mormon settlements in Utah thirty years ago. Reason only kept the Giant Despair from the threshold of the mind. The bravery of these women can be compared only to the English women of the Sepoy Rebellion days of 1857 in India, or to those of our American sisters who accompanied their valorous husbands to their isolated posts on the Indian frontiers, resolved to share equally in the dangers, and to die lingeringly and141cruelly if necessary. Retreat and surrender never grew in the hearts of such women. It was so in the times that were called the “dark days” in Utah––the time when the government applied its functions to the stamping out of polygamous practices, 1883 to 1893––ten terrible years for the Mormon as well as the non-Mormon.

Add to this the fact that, unannounced, a brawny, stalwart Indian might walk in at the door. More than once has it so occurred in our home. One day the door was suddenly opened and in walked a grinning brave, armed with a long knife, and followed by his squaw; extending his empty hand toward the far-from-home girl-wife, alone in the house, he said, “How-do!” In telling us of it, she said: “I was scared to death, I thought, but I would have shaken hands with him if I had died in the attempt. I would not let him know I feared him.” But this was not Weber Tom.

It was in those fearsome days when the leading men of Utah––farmers, bankers, stockmen, church dignitaries, all sorts and conditions of the Latter-Day Saints––were142being arrested and haled to the courts almost daily, that one morning there rode up to our door the battle-scarred old warrior, Weber Tom, chief of the Skull Valley Utes, or Goshutes.

If perfection is beauty, this Indian was most beautiful, for he was the ugliest creature imaginable, ugly even to perfection. One eye had been gouged out, a knife-scar extended from his ear down across his mouth, and he was Herculean in physical proportions. I am a large man, but once when I gave him an overcoat he tried vainly to button it over his vast frontal protuberance, looking at me and saying, “Too short, too short.”

This giant chief dismounted, and, seeing my wife standing near, reached the reins of the bridle to her and said, “Here, squaw, hol’ my hoss.”

She said, quietly, “Hold your own horse if you want him held.”

Having had to accommodate himself to the rudeness of a civilized woman, he made other provision for his cayuse and then asked her, “Wheh yo’man?”

She told him I was down in the field, and143he then proceeded to find me. He was in the depths of trouble. He had several squaw-wives and feared he was to be arrested for it.

Now he approached me. It was dramatic; it was high-class pantomime. It is too bad the kinetoscope, cinematograph, or some other moving-picture machine had not been invented. He seemed awed by a presence, yet so emboldened by the needs of his case that he walked stoically to his quest.

Squaring his Atlaslike shoulders, he began: “You heap big chief. You talky this way” (at the same time extending one finger straight from his lips). “Mormon he talky this way” (now extending two fingers, to show he understood them to talk with double tongue). “Mormon telly me sojer men ketchy me, put me in jug [jail]; me havy two, tree, four squaw. You heap big chief. You telly me this way” (one finger). Continuing, he said: “Me havy two, tree, four squaw. Mormon he telly me, me go jug; one my squaw he know dat, he heap cry,heapcry, HEAP cry, by um by die!”

This was accompanied by gestures, throwing144his body backward in imitation of the dying woman whom fear had killed, according to his dramatic story.

I told him something like this: “No, heap big lie. You go back Skull Valley, you stay home, no sojer ketchy you, you be heap good Injun!” Upon this he grunted deeply, shook hands cordially, went back to his many-wived tents over across the creek, and soon we saw them filing off through the sagebrush toward their Skull Valley home, many miles over the Onaqui range.

145POLYGAMY OF TO-DAY

The man that lays his hand upon a woman,Save in the way of kindness, is a wretchWhom ’t were gross flattery to name a coward.

––John Tobin.

A baby was sleeping,Its mother was weeping.––Samuel Lover.

Polygamymaydie in Mormondom, but has never yet done so. Cases are often reported, and from the manner of their finding it is a certainty that new alliances are being formed continually between married men and unmarried women.

Not long ago a very bright conversion was made in one of the missions of an evangelical denomination. The convert was a young woman of more than average intelligence. Some of her relatives had been polygamists, but she repudiated the whole cult and creed. For a while this decision made it necessary for her to find other residence than her rightful home.

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Some time after she permitted herself to be persuaded that a young man of her acquaintance loved her more than he did the polygamous tenet of his church––he was a Mormon––and that he never would attempt to woo and win another woman while she remained his wife. She consented, and was happy in her home life. Not for a moment did she suspect him of double-dealing. Her honest heart was above entertaining such suspicion had it entered. Serenely she saw her children growing to useful womanhood. Not a cloud of anxiety appeared on the calm sea of life; all was fine sailing. One day she was making some repairs in one of her husband’s garments when a letter fell from a pocket. It bore the postmark of a city where they both had relatives, and it was quite natural that she should look into its contents.

What despair and agony seized her when she read therein the statement from the “other woman” telling her “fond” husband of the birth of the child!

The poor, heart-stricken, and hitherto trusting wife immediately rose to the dignity of outraged womanhood and insulted147wifehood and compelled the polygamist to choose at once between her and the concubine. He did so, choosing the younger woman and leaving her who had trusted him too fondly.

This is not a tale of the ancients in Utah, but a living, festering story of the vivid present.

One way of avoiding prosecution by the law is the surreptitious, clandestine rearing of children, whose mothers lose no prestige in the community; for it is well understood “among the neighbors and friends.” “Public polygamy has been suspended,” but the requirement of the doctrine remains unchanged.

149GREAT SALT LAKE

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So lonely ’twas that God himselfScarce seemed there to be.

––Coleridge.

This is truth the poet singsThat a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is rememberinghappier things.

––Tennyson.

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GREAT SALT LAKE

Many stories, weird and lurid, true and untrue, have been told of this body of saline water lying imposed on the breast of the beautiful and scenic State of Utah. Although one of the transcontinental highways of ocean-to-ocean travel has extended its bands of steel directly across its wide bosom for many miles, it is still a spot where mystery lingers.

Private as well as public legends are handed down from lip to ear rather than from page to eye. For that reason there are tales of this wonderful salt sea to be learned only by residing in the vicinity. Its natural moods are unlike the ocean, and its individual characteristics would make a book.

The briny pond is but a wee thing as compared with its gigantic dimensions in the days when its waters were sweet and had an outlet to the north. Then its arms spread far south into Arizona, over into Nevada and into Idaho. It was 350 miles152from the northern end to the southern, and 145 miles across from east to west. The area was 20,000 square miles. This greater lake stood 1,000 feet higher than does the present one, although this one is 4,280 feet above the level of the sea. Geologists have named the earlier one Bonneville, in honor of the intrepid soldier-explorer whom Washington Irving has so well fixed in American literature.

By some as yet unknown cataclysm a great break was made at the north end of this inland ocean and its pent volume was poured into the cañon of the Port Neuf toward the ravenous Snake. This reduced the level four hundred feet, but the old beach line may still be easily noted. Gradually this diminished body became smaller and smaller until it reached the present stage of desiccation.

So impure is this heavy liquid that after evaporation there is a residuum of twenty-eight pounds of solid matter in every hundred. This is composed of salt, magnesium, and other elements carrying three dollars of gold to the ton; the gold is not made a matter of trade or of industry because153facilities are lacking for its handling. Very little animal life is found in this brine, and none of vegetable; in fact, at every point where the water touches the shore vegetation vanishes utterly. The animal life is that of a very small gnat which, mosquito-like, lays its eggs on the surface of the water. The larvæ, when driven shoreward, collect in such quantities as to cause a strong, unpleasant odor observable for miles to the leeward. Myriads of seagulls here find a dainty feast.

Salt Lake affords the finest and really the only beach-bathing resort in the whole interocean country. The bathing is attended with little, if any, danger. In thirty years only two persons have been lost. These strangled before assistance reached them. One body was found after four years, lying in the salty sand at the south end of the lake, whither the high winds from the north had drifted it. All the parts protected by the sand were perfectly preserved and as beautiful as if carved from Parian marble.

The tops of a number of sunken mountains still protrude above the surface and154form islands: such are Fremont, Church, Stanbury, Carrington, and others. Some of these are habitable, possessing fine springs and irrigable land. Very few people live on these islands, but some brave spirits dare to face the semiprivations of such isolation and stay there with their herds.

Doubtless, many tales of heroism and devotion could be told of those who have lived on these islands. One of the best known is that of Mrs. Wenner, who, a few years after her marriage, went with her husband and little children to live on Fremont Island. Her husband’s health failing, the oversight of the herds fell largely upon her, but she cheerily took up the burden, the while she trained her little ones, and was ever a true companion to him whom she daily saw slipping away.

The end came on a dread and fearsome day, while the faithful man who worked for them was detained on the mainland by a raging storm. The children and an incompetent woman could give her little assistance or consolation. There on the lonely, storm-lashed island, with faint-whispered words of love, the dear one155closed his eyes forever. Tenderly she cared for his body, and sadly she kept her vigil, replenishing through the long night the two watchfires intended as a signal to those on the mainland. On the night of the second day, the man made his dangerous way back to the island––and with his help she laid the loved husband in his island grave, with no service but the tears and prayers of those who mourned.

This is but one story of desolation and sorrow––but the deep, briny waters and the barren, forbidding shores hold in their keeping many suggestions of mystery and of tears.

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