Forty Thousand Miles Over Land and Water. Ethel Gwendoline Vincent
the gutters answers the double purpose of irrigation and drainage.
We naturally first wended our way to the Tabernacle. It is the dreariest of whitewashed buildings inside. The rounded dome of the roof is unsupported by any pillars, and faded evergreen wreaths and tawdry flags are suspended from the centre, erected for Commemoration Day, some fifteen years ago, and never since taken down. The organ ranks as the third largest in the States. In the little wooden boxes, ranged in tiers on the platform in a gradually descending scale, sit the President, the Elders, and the Bishops. From here they call upon Brother So-and-So to address the congregation. There is a most wonderful echo in the Tabernacle; we distinctly heard a pin dropped at the further end to where we were standing. The marble Temple, which is being built to replace the old place of worship, has already cost 750,000l., but judging from the few workmen in the sheds, we thought the funds had perhaps come to an end. We went next to Zion's Co-operative Store; it is a fine stone building, with the text "Holiness to the Lord" blazoned on a sign over the door, and inside you might fancy yourself in the Army and Navy Co-operative Stores—the same division of departments, including the lift to each floor. An "elder" showed us through; and all those employed in the buildings are Mormons. True believers are exhorted to deal solely at the store.
There is a theatre, and the Walker Opera House; for they maintain, and quite rightly, that, "As all people have a fondness for dramatic representations, it is well to so regulate and govern such exhibitions, that they may be instructive and purifying in their tendencies. If the best people absent themselves, the worst will dictate the character of the exercises."
Behind a high stone wall are the two houses that belonged to Brigham Young, called the Bee and the Lion Houses, from the carved designs over the doors; in the latter Brigham Young died. Exactly opposite is the large stone house—the finest in the territory (Utah is not a state but a territory)—which he built for his last and seventeenth wife and which is now occupied by his successor, President Taylor. Asking to be shown Brigham Young's grave, we were taken to a plot of grass, roughly walled in, and in the centre was the grave, of loosely piled stones, marked with a wooden cross. He was buried here, and not in the cemetery, as a distinguishing mark of respect; but if so, his resting-place might, we thought, have been better cared for. Many of the Mormon residences may be recognized by their green gates and several entrances, for the separate use of the different wives and families. At present the population of Salt Lake City is 14,000, of which about 10,000 are Mormons, but the mines in the Wahsatch range are bringing a great influx of Gentiles. The Government have made many ineffectual attempts to convict the Mormons of polygamy, but the prosecutions always languish for want of evidence, as they are faithful to the tenets of their religion. Not even the unhappy wives superseded, and often tormented by the last favourite, can be brought to give evidence.
Many are followers of the religion of the "Latter Day Saints" without necessarily becoming polygamists. We invested in some Mormon literature; a pamphlet "On the Bible and Polygamy; a Discussion between Elder Orson Pratt, one of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and the Rev. Dr. Newman, Chaplain of the United States' Senate," in which it must be confessed, the former seemed to have rather the best of the argument; also a Mormon Bible, which is divided into the four books of Nephi, and ten others. The Bible seems to have been taken as the foundation for many chapters, and worked into the tenets of the Mormon faith, forms a curious medley. In the Catechism, which we also got, we found that the question and answer was generally authenticated by a text, quoted from the Scriptures and the Mormon Bible, and placed side by side. This catechism consists of eighteen chapters, and seems more to be a full exposition of faith than for the instruction of children. I give a few extracts from the last chapter, which I think may be interesting:—
"1. Q. Has God given any particular revelation in these last days for the preservation of their lives and health to His people?
"A. Yes. He gave a revelation to Joseph Smith on this subject.
"2. Q. What is this revelation called?
"A. A Word of Wisdom.
"7. Q. What does the first paragraph or verse of this Word of Wisdom teach us?
"A. That it is not good to drink wine or strong drinks, excepting in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and then it should be home-made grape wine; that it is not good to drink hot drinks, or chew or smoke tobacco; that strong drinks are for the washing of the body, and that tobacco is an herb for bruises and sick cattle.
"8. Q. What does the second paragraph teach us?
"A. That herbs and fruits are for the food of man; that grain is for the food of man, and beasts, and fowls; and that flesh is not to be eaten by man, excepting in times of winter, cold, and famine.
"11. Q. Why is it not good to drink wine or strong drinks?
"A. Because they excite men unnaturally, inflame their stomachs, vitiate their appetites, and disorder their whole systems.
"13. Q. Why is it not good to smoke or chew tobacco?
"A. Because those habits are very filthy, and tobacco is of a poisonous nature, and the use of it debases men.
"14. Q. Why should flesh be eaten by man in winter, and in times of famine, and not at other times?
"A. Flesh is heating to the human system, therefore it is not good to eat flesh in summer; but God allows His people to eat it in winter, and in times of famine, because all animals suffer death naturally, if they do not by the hand of man."
We left Salt Lake City in the afternoon, and skirted along the shores in the train of the Great Salt Lake—the Dead Sea of America. Two feet of pure salt lie encrusted round its shores; the water contains 20 per cent. of it, and the evaporation of four barrels of water leaves one of salt. The atmosphere is always bluish and hazy from the effects of this active evaporation. No fish or fowl can live in the lake, and it is impossible to drown, so great is the buoyancy of the water, though death can easily be caused by strangulation.
We arrived at Ogden at three o'clock, the junction where a connection with the Central Pacific Railway is made. And here there ensued a very weary waiting of four hours for another Denver and Rio Grande train. When it did arrive we made up a train of twelve cars, with the arrears of passengers and baggage from the late "wash out."
In the year 1844 when Fremont made his first exploration across the vast prairies, there was not a single line of railway west of the Alleghanies. The discovery of gold in California drew attention to the enormous wealth lying to the Far West, and Congress made a grant for an exploration, which resulted in the commencement of the Central Pacific line, this great junction between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. On the 10th of May, 1869, the lines from the east and west met in the middle of the prairie, and the last tie, a silver one, was laid in commemoration of the event.
All through that night we were passing through the great American Desert of 600 square miles, once the bed of a vast saline lake. The next morning there was still nothing to be seen but mud-dried plains with here and there a little sage brush, the ground being cracked and parched under the burning sun. In some parts there were fields of white alkali, making the lips salt and the eyes smart painfully.
I verily believe nothing could surpass the terrific, fiery heat of that day in the cars; we could not read or talk, but sat with parched lips, panting, the sand floating into the car in a white cloud that soon made us and all around invisible. One poor old woman in the next car nearly died; they fanned her all day, whilst she wailed piteously for one breath of air.
At some of the stations we passed there were groups of the Piute Indians, clothed in striped blankets with bead necklaces, and one mother brought her "papoose" (baby), slung on to her back in a long basket, that had the characteristic features of the race—the pear-shaped eyes and the drawn-down corners of the mouth—ridiculously strongly marked in its wee, brown face. The mother begged for "two bits for the wee papoose."
We had luncheon in the middle of the day at Humboldt, a few green trees about the station forming a very oasis in the desert; the exertion of getting out made us, if possible, a little hotter. We thought then of the awful sufferings endured by the early emigrants, as they toiled day after day over these alkali