Maiden Voyages by Mary Morris Page A

sufferings, they with their wives and children, in worn-out waggons, a really heroic company of fanatics, having crossed 1,000 miles of desert, began to take possession of a land, certainly not flowing with milk and honey—not an ear of corn could be grown without irrigation; and armiesof grasshoppers, wild Indians, and Mexican brigands, contantly descended on their scanty crops.
    Still the people grew and multiplied, and sent out missionaries to all parts of the world (there were twenty-five nationalities represented in the Tabernacle at the festival the other day) under Brigham Young’s vigorous rule; and now out here, where thirty-three years ago the Mormon pioneers built their first mud fort, there is a flourishing town with 20,000 inhabitants, two lines of railway, school boards, daily papers, and co-operative societies.
    Since the rich silver-mines of Utah and the transcontinental railway have brought in speculators and a wave of Gentile enterprise, the prosperity of Zion has increased rapidly; but Mormonism is losing its distinctive features—hard work, and plenty of wives to do it;—the younger women, who do not think “that the half is as good as the whole,” are declining co-operative matrimony, and actually want a husband all to themselves. No need for repressive measures and actions for bigamy; progress in civilisation and increased demand for the article, now that armies of silver-miners, digging up wealth, have come into the country, will soon make it impossible for a Saint to indulge in the luxury of more than one wife.
    But all this time we were listening to Brother Orson Pratt’s apostolic sermon, from the 20th Chapter of Revelation, supplemented by nonsense out of the “Book of Mormon.” The latter is a silly mixture of the Koran and a modern romance, in which, however, it is allowed that “not only the Bible and Book of Mormon, but all other good books, are inspired by God,” and “that men will be punished for their own sins, not for Adam’s transgressions”—strangely liberal doctrines for the fiercely puritanical spirit of Mormonism to adopt. Like other would-be expounders of prophecy, the preacher turned the glorious visions of St. John into seemingly convincing proofs of his own theories—which none but the unconverted or sectarians could deny. Having triumphantly disposed of modern science, he proved that Adam had once resided in Jackson county, east of the Missouri River, but did not seem quite clear as to the location of the ultimate New Jerusalem, only it would certainly be on the American Continent, and include amongst its citizens theAmerican Indians, who undoubtedly were the living descendants of the Lost Tribes (I devoutly hope the latter may remain on American soil—they have followed us all round the world).
    Many admirable moral truths he preached, in the spirit of the last much-to-be-commended article of the Mormon Faith: “We believe in being honest, true, chaste, temperate, benevolent, virtuous, and upright; and in doing good to all men.” Indeed, it is allowed that the Saints’ treatment of the Indian tribes round them has been just and merciful. But of course there was much, to our minds, blasphemous rubbish in the sermon, like the hymn on “Celestial marriage” in the hymn-book beside me, setting forth that the Mormons were “to multiply wives, because, unlike other unprofitable servants, they made good use of their ten talents (ten wives), and that to him that hath shall be given.”
    Our venerable-looking preacher, besides being an apostle, has done some fighting in his time. In 1857 he, at the head of the Mormon legion, completely routed the United States troops at Fort Bridger, carried off their stores, and left them in an almost destitute condition, to find their way back to civilisation across the desert.
    We did not wait for the conclusion of the sermon, but took the excursion train to the Lake, where sundry Mormons of all ages were splashing about in quite