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[Letter dated "Salt Lake City,
Utah, May 15, 1877." Editor.]
THE mountains rise grandly
round about this curious city, the Zion of the new Saints, so grandly that
the city itself is hardly visible. The Wahsatch Range, snow-laden and
adorned with glacier-sculptured peaks, stretches continuously along the
eastern horizon, forming the boundary of the Great Salt Lake Basin; while
across the valley of the Jordan southwestward from here, you behold the
Oquirrh Range, about as snowy and lofty as the Wahsatch. To the northwest
your eye skims the blue levels of the great lake, out of the midst of which
rise island mountains, and beyond, at a distance of fifty miles, is seen the
picturesque wall of the lakeside mountains blending with the lake and the
sky.
The glacial developments of
these superb ranges are sharply sculptured peaks and crests, with ample
wombs between them where the ancient snows of the glacial period were
collected and transformed into ice, and ranks of profound shadowy caflons,
while moraines commensurate with the lofty fountains extend into the
valleys, forming far the grandest series of glacial monuments I have yet
seen this side of the Sierra.
In beginning this letter I
meant to describe the city, but in the company of these noble old mountains,
it is not easy to bend one's attention upon anything else. Salt Lake cannot
be called a very beautiful town, neither is there anything ugly or repulsive
about it. From the slopes of the Wahsatch foothills, or old lake benches,
toward Fort Douglas it is seen to occupy the sloping gravelly delta of City
Creek, a fine, hearty stream that comes pouring from the snows of the
mountains through a majestic glacial caņon; and it is just where this stream
comes forth into the light on the edge of the valley of the Jordan that the
Mormons have built their new Jerusalem.
At first sight there is
nothing very marked in the external appearance of the town excepting its
leafiness. Most of the houses are veiled with trees, as if set down in the
midst of one grand orchard; and seen at a little distance they appear like a
field of glacier boulders overgrown with aspens, such as one often meets in
the upper valleys of the California Sierra, for only the angular roofs are
clearly visible.
Perhaps nineteen twentieths
of the houses are built of bluish-gray adobe bricks, and are only one or two
stories high, forming fine cottage homes which promise simple comfort
within. They are set well back from the street, leaving room for a flower
garden, while almost every one has a thrifty orchard at the sides and around
the back. The gardens are laid out with great simplicity, indicating love
for flowers by people comparatively poor, rather than deliberate efforts of
the rich for showy artistic effects. They are like the pet gardens of
children, about as artless and humble, and harmonize with the low dwellings
to which they belong. In almost every one you find daisies, and mint, and
lilac bushes, and rows of plain English tulips. Lilacs and tulips are the
most characteristic flowers, and nowhere have I seen them in greater
perfection. As Oakland is preeminently a city of roses, so is this Mormon
Saints' Rest a city of lilacs and tulips. The flowers, at least, are
saintly, and they are surely loved. Scarce a home, however obscure, is
without them, and the simple, unostentatious manner in which they are
planted and gathered in pots and boxes about the windows shows how truly
they are prized. The
surrounding commons, the marshy levels of the Jordan, and dry, gravelly lake
benches on the slopes of the Wahsatch foothills are now gay with wild
flowers, chief among which are a species of phlox, with an abundance of rich
pink corollas, growing among sagebrush in showy tufts, and a beautiful
papilionaceous plant, with silky leaves and large clusters of purple
flowers, banner, wings, and keel exquisitely shaded, a mertensia,
hydrophyllum, white boragewort, orthocarpus, several species of violets, and
a tall scarlet gilia. It is delightful to see how eagerly all these are
sought after by the children, both boys and girls. Every day that I have
gone botanizing I have met groups of little Latter-Days with their precious
bouquets, and at such times it was hard to believe the dark, bloody passages
of Mormon history. But
to return to the city. As soon as City Creek approaches its upper limit its
waters are drawn off right and left, and distributed in brisk rills, one on
each side of every street, the regular slopes of the delta upon which the
city is built being admirably adapted to this system of street irrigation.
These streams are all pure and sparkling in the upper streets, but, as they
are used to some extent as sewers, they soon manifest the consequence of
contact with civilization, though the speed of their flow prevents their
becoming offensive, and little Saints not over particular may be seen
drinking from them everywhere.
The streets are remarkably wide and the
buildings low, making them appear yet wider than they really are. Trees are
planted along the sidewalks - elms, poplars, maples, and a few catalpas and
hawthorns; yet they are mostly small and irregular, and nowhere form avenues
half so leafy and imposing as one would be led to expect. Even in the
business streets there is but little regularity in the buildings now a row
of plain adobe structures, half store, half dwelling, then a high mercantile
block of red brick or sandstone, and again a row of adobe cottages nestled
back among apple trees. There is one immense store with its sign upon the
roof, in letters big enough to be read miles away, "Z.C.M.I." (Zion's
Cooperative Mercantile Institution), while many a small, codfishy corner
grocery bears the legend "Holiness to the Lord, Z.C.M.I." But little
evidence will you find in this Zion, with its fifteen thousand souls, of
great wealth, though many a Saint is seeking, it as keenly as any Yankee
Gentile. But on the other hand, searching throughout all the city, you will
not find any trace of squalor or extreme poverty.
Most of the women I have chanced to meet,
specially those from the country, have a weary, repressed look, as if for
the sake of their religion they were patiently carrying burdens heavier than
they were well able to bear. But, strange as it must seem to Gentiles, the
many wives of one man, instead of being repelled from one another by
jealousy, appear to be drawn all the closer together, as if the real
marriage existed between the wives only. Groups of half a dozen or so may
frequently be seen on the streets in close conversation, looking as innocent
and unspeculative as a lot of heifers, while the masculine Saints pass them
by as if they belonged to a distinct species. In the Tabernacle last Sunday,
one of the elders of the church, in discoursing upon the good things of
life, the possessions of Latter-Day Saints, enumerated fruitful fields,
horses, cows, wives, and implements, the wives being placed as above,
between the cows and implements, without receiving any superior emphasis.
Polygamy, as far as I have observed, exerts a
more degrading influence upon husbands than upon wives. The love of the
latter finds expression in flowers and children, while the former seem to be
rendered incapable of pure love of anything. The spirit of Mormonism is
intensely exclusive and un-American. A more withdrawn, compact, sealed-up
body of people could hardly be found on the face of the earth than is
gathered here, notwithstanding railroads, telegraphs, and the penetrating
lights that go sifting through society everywhere in this revolutionary,
question-asking century. Most of the Mormons I have met seem to be in a
state of perpetual apology, which can hardly be fully accounted for by
Gentile attacks. At any rate it is unspeakably offensive to any free man.
"We Saints," they are continually saying, "are
not as bad as we are called. We don't murder those who differ with us, but
rather treat them with all charity. You may go through our town night or day
and no harm shall befall you. Go into our houses and you will be well used.
We are as glad as you are that Lee was punished," etc. While taking a
saunter the other evening we were overtaken by a characteristic Mormon, "an
'umble man," who made us a very deferential salute and then walked on with
us about half a mile. We discussed whatsoever of Mormon doctrines came to
mind with American freedom, which he defended as best he could, speaking in
an excited but deprecating tone. When hard pressed he would say: "I don't
understand these deep things, but the elders do. I'm only an humble
tradesman." In taking leave he thanked us for the pleasure of our querulous
conversation, removed his hat, and bowed lowly in a sort of Uriah Heep
manner, and then went to his humble home. How many humble wives it
contained, we did not learn.
Fine specimens of manhood are by no means
wanting, but the number of people one meets here who have some physical
defect or who attract one's attention by some mental peculiarity that
manifests itself through the eyes, is astonishingly great in so small a
city. It would evidently be unfair to attribute these defects to Mormonism,
though Mormonism has undoubtedly been the magnet that elected and drew these
strange people together from all parts of the world.
But however "the peculiar doctrines" and
"peculiar practices" of Mormonism have affected the bodies and the minds of
the old Saints, the little Latter-Day boys and girls are as happy and
natural as possible, running wild, with plenty of good hearty parental
indulgence, playing, fighting, gathering flowers in delightful innocence;
and when we consider that most of the parents have been drawn from the
thickly settled portion of the Old World, where they have long suffered the
repression of hunger and hard toil, these Mormon children, "Utah's best
crop," seem remarkably bright and promising.
From children one passes
naturally into the blooming wilderness, to the pure religion of sunshine and
snow, where all the good and the evil of this strange people lifts and
vanishes from the mind like mist from the mountains. |
