Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859
by
Various

Part 2 out of 5



"MY DEAR POLLY,

"I wrote you from Fishkill the day before I left it, and shall put this
into the office here for the post to take as he comes along. On Friday,
towards evening, we left Fishkill. It was dark and squally when we got
to the landing, and we had nine horses in the boat, which made us a
little uneasy, as a few days before a boat had been overset and some
people drowned; however, we got safe over, and lay that night at Colonel
Hawsbrook's, where you spent two or three days on your return from
Bethlehem. The next morning we breakfasted with Dr. Craik at Murderer's
Creek, and then proceeded through the Clove, a most disagreeable place,
and horrid road. In the evening we got to Ringwood. Upon our arrival
there, we were informed there was no public house in the place, and it
was after dark. Colonel Biddle had favored me with an order on all his
magazines to supply me with forage; he has one in this place. I waited
on his deputy and presented the order; he went out of the room, and in a
few minutes returned with a Mr. Erskine, who is surveyor-general of the
roads; he gave me a polite invitation to spend the night at his house,
where we were entertained in the most genteel, hospitable, and friendly
manner. A shower of rain yesterday morning prevented our proceeding,
but, as it cleared up about noon, we came on thirty-four miles to this
place. I expect to reach Philadelphia the day after tomorrow. I have
been from home almost a month, and have received but one letter, but
hope to find several waiting for me at Philadelphia, as I cannot think
you would miss a post. The enemy last Thursday left their posts at Stony
Point and Verplanck's Point, and retired to New York."

* * * * *

"_Bristol, October 27, 1779_.

"MY DEAR POLLY,

"I wrote you from Morristown, which it is probable you will receive by
this post. Lest that should miscarry, this will inform you that I am at
length arrived within twenty miles of Philadelphia, where I expect
to dine this day. A few days will determine how long I am like to be
detained there;--I think it upon every account best to finish all my
business. The gentlemen have bound themselves to each other by an
engagement upon honor, if nothing is done for our department by New
Year's day, all to resign, and have informed Congress of it: I have
joined in the engagement. If I find I am like to be detained here any
time, it is not improbable I may put my accounts in the hands of the
Commissioners, and, if I can get fresh horses, proceed with Mr. Lee on a
visit to Mrs. Washington at Mount Pleasant in Virginia. Mr. Lee desires
his compliments. Adieu, my love. I am, with the sincerest affection,

"Ever yours."

* * * * *

"_Danbury, December 8, 1779_.

"MY DEAR POLLY,

"I am once more returned to dear Danbury, on my way to Boston. I arrived
here about an hour since, and never had a more fatiguing, disagreeable
journey in my life than from Philadelphia here. I expected to have been
in Boston by this time; but two severe storms, and one day waiting for
his Excellency at Morristown, have made me twelve days performing a
journey which according to my usual way of travelling I should have
performed in four. I have, however, no reason to repent my undertaking
this journey.

"If sickness or very bad weather does not prevent, I shall certainly be
home by Christmas, and wish to have all our friends together;--I promise
myself a great deal of happiness, and hope I shall not be disappointed.
Adieu, my love."

* * * * *

September 30th, 1780, the Hospital Department was newly organized, and
the office of Deputy Director-General was abolished, and of course the
incumbents of that office were no longer in the hospital service.

Dr. Foster's health was irreparably injured by the fatigues and
exposures he had undergone, and he lingered but a few months longer,
dying on the 27th of February, 1781, in his forty-second year.

One sentence in his will deserves record, as in harmony with the
disinterestedness of his life. After desiring that all debts due him
should be collected as soon as possible after his decease, he adds this
clause: "But I would not have any industrious and really poor persons
distressed for this purpose."

The writer of these letters needs no additional eulogy. He sacrificed
all the prospects of his life to give his services in our struggle for
freedom. He, too, was but one of that innumerable multitude who, in
more exalted or in humbler stations, freely gave their exertions, their
wealth, their comfort, and their lives for freedom and right. It is
possible so to linger by the grave of the past as to forget the living
present; but the grateful memory of those who have in their times
contended for truth with self-denial should be ever animating to those
now laboring in the holy warfare, to which, in every age, whether the
outward signs be of peace or strife, God calls the noble of mankind.

"Therefore bring violets! Yet, if we,
self-balked,
Stand still a-strewing violets all the while,
These had as well not moved, ourselves not
talked
Of these."

* * * * *


IN THE PINES.


If I were a crow, or, at least, had the faculty of flying with that
swift directness which is proverbially attributed to the corvine tribe,
and were to wing a southwesterly course from the truck of the flag-staff
which rises from the Battery at New York, I should find myself, within a
very short time, about fifty miles from the turbulent city, and hovering
over a region of country as little like the civilized emporium just
quitted as it is well possible to conceive. Not being a crow, however,
nor fitted up with an apparatus for flying,--destitute even of a
balloon,--I am compelled to adopt the means of locomotion which the
bounty of God or the ingenuity of man affords me, and to spend a
somewhat longer time in transit to my destination.

Over the New Jersey Railroad, then, I rattled, one fine, sunshiny autumn
morning, in the year that has recently taken leave of us, as far as
Bordentown, a distance of some fifty-seven miles, on my way to a
locality the very existence of which is scarcely dreamed of by thousands
in the metropolis, who can tell you how many square miles of malaria
there are in the Roman Campagna, and who have got the topography of
Caffre Land at their fingers' ends. It is a region aboriginal in
savagery, grand in the aspects of untrammelled Nature; where forests
extend in uninterrupted lines over scores of miles; where we may wander
a good day's journey without meeting half-a-dozen human faces; where
stately deer will bound across our path, and bears dispute our passage
through the cedar-brakes; where, in a word, we may enjoy the undiluted
essence, the perfect wildness, of woodland life. Deep and far "under the
shade of melancholy boughs" we shall be taken, if together we visit the
ancient Pines of New Jersey.

In order to do so, we must make at Bordentown the acquaintance of Mr.
Cox, and take our seats in his stage for a jolt, twelve miles long, to
the village of New Egypt, on the frontier of the Pines. Although the
forest is accessible from many points, and may be entered by a number of
distinct approaches, I, the writer hereof, selected that _via_ New Egypt
as the most convenient to a comer from Now York, and as, perhaps, the
least fatiguing to accomplish.

But, oh! the horrors of those New Jersey roads! Mud? 'Tis as if all the
rains of heaven had been concentrated upon all the marls and clays of
earth, and all the sticky stratum plastered down in a wiggling line
of unascertainable length and breadth! Holes? As if a legion of
sharpshooters had been detailed for the defence of Sandy Hook, and had
excavated for themselves innumerable rifle-pits or caverns for the
discomfiture of unhappy passengers! Up hill and down dale,--with
merciless ruts and savage ridges,--now, a slough, to all appearance
destitute of bottom, and, next, a treacherous stretch of sand, into
which the wheels sink deeper and deeper at every revolution, as if the
vehicle were France, and the road disorder,--such is a faint adumbration
of the state of affairs in the benighted interior of our petulant little
whiskey-drinking sister State!

But all earthly things come to an end, and so, accordingly, did our
three-hours' drive. The stage pompously rolled into the huddled street
of its terminus, and deposited me, in the neighborhood of noon, on the
stoop of the only tavern supported in the deadly-lively place. No long
sojourn, however, was in store for me. Presently--ere I had grown tired
of watching the couple of clodhoppers, well-bespattered as to boots and
undergarments with Jersey mud, who, leaning against a fence in true
agricultural laziness, deliberately eyed, or rather, gloated over the
inoffensive traveller, as though he were that "daily stranger,"
for whom, as is well known, every Jerseyman offers up matutinal
supplications--a buggy appeared in the distance, and I was shortly asked
for. It was the vehicle in which I was to seek my destination in the
Pines; and my back was speedily turned upon the queer little
village with the curiously chosen name. My driver, an intelligent,
sharp-featured old man, soon informs me that he was born and has lived
for fifty years in the forest. A curious, old-world mortal,--our
father's "serving-man," to the very life! The Pines are to him what
Banks and City Halls and Cooper Institutes and Astor Houses are to a
poor _cittadini_; every tree is individualized; and I doubt not he could
find his way by night from one end to the other of the forest.

We had driven no great distance, when my companion lifted his whip, and,
pointing to a long, dark, indistinct line which crossed the road in the
distance, blocking the prospect ahead and on either side, as far as the
eye could reach, exclaimed: "Them's the Pines!" As we approached the
forest, a change, theatrical in its suddenness, took place in the
scenery through which our course was taken. The rich and smiling
pasture-lands, interspersed with fields of luxuriant corn, were left
behind, the red clay of the road was exchanged for a gritty sand, and
the road itself dwindled to a mere pathway through a clearing. The
locality looked like a plagiarism from the Ohio backwoods. On both sides
of our path spread the graceful undergrowth, waving in an ocean of
green, and hiding the stumps with which the plain was covered, while far
away, to right and left, the prospect was bounded by forest walls, and
gloomy bulwarks and parapets of pines arose in front, as if designed, in
their perfect denseness, to exclude the world from some bosky Garden
of Paradise beyond. Not so, however; for our pathway squeezes itself
between two melancholy sentinel-pines, tracing its white scroll into the
forest farther than the eye can follow, and in a few moments we leave
the clearing behind, and pass into the shadow of the endless avenue,
and bow beneath the trailing branches of the silent, stern, immovable
warders at the gate. We were fairly in the Pines; and a drive of
somewhat more than three miles lay before us still.

The immense forest region I had thus entered covers an extensive portion
of Burlington County, and nearly the whole of Ocean, beside parts
of Monmouth, Camden, Atlantic, Gloucester, and other counties. The
prevailing soils of this great area--some sixty miles in length by ten
in breadth, and reaching from the river Delaware to the very shore of
the Atlantic--are marls and sands of different qualities, of which the
most common is a fine, white, angular sand, of the kind so much in
request for building-purposes and the manufacture of glass. In such an
arid soil the _coniferae_ alone could nourish, and accordingly we find
that the wide-spreading region is overgrown almost entirely with white
and yellow pine, hemlock, and cedar. Hence its distinctive appellation.

It was a most lovely afternoon, warm and serene as only an American
autumn afternoon knows how to be; and while we hurried past the mute,
monotonous, yet ever-shifting array of pines and cedars, the very rays
of the sun seemed to be perfumed with the aroma of the fragrant twigs,
about which humming-birds now and then whirred and fluttered as we
startled them, scarcely more brilliant in color than the gorgeous maples
which grew in one or two dry and open spots. For three-quarters of an
hour our drive continued, until at length a slight undulation broke the
level of the sand, and a fence, inclosing a patch of Indian corn, from
which the forest had been driven back, betokened for the first time the
proximity of some habitation. In fact, having reached the summit of the
slope, I found myself in the centre of an irregular range of dwellings,
scattered here and there in picturesque disregard of order, and
next moment my hand was grasped by my friend B. I had reached my
destination,--Hanover Iron-Works,--and was soon walking up, past the
white gateway, to the Big House.

Somewhat less than eighty years ago, Mr. Benjamin Jones, a merchant of
Philadelphia, invested a portion of his fortune in the purchase of one
hundred thousand acres of land in the then unbroken forest of the Pines.
The site of the present hamlet of Hanover struck him as admirably
adapted for the establishment of a smelting-furnace, and he accordingly
projected a settlement on this spot. The Rancocus River forms here a
broad embayment, the damming of which was easily accomplished, and one
of the best of water-privileges was thus obtained. On the north of this
bay or pond, moreover, there rises a sloping bluff, which was covered,
at the period of its purchase, with ancient trees, but upon which a
large and commodious mansion was soon erected. Here Mr. Jones planted
himself, and quickly drew around him a settlement which rose in number
to some four hundred souls; and here he commenced the manufacture of
iron. At frequent intervals in the Pines were found surface-deposits
of ore, the precipitate from waters holding iron in solution, which
frequently covered an area of many acres, and reached a depth of
from two or three inches to as many feet. The ore thus existing in
surface-deposits was smelted in the iron-works, and the metal thence
obtained was at once molten and moulded in the adjoining foundry. Here,
in the midst of these spreading forests, many a ponderous casting,
many a fiery rush of tons of molten metal, has been seen. Here,
five-and-forty years ago, the celebrated Decatur superintended, during
many weeks, the casting of twenty-four pounders, to be used in the
famous contest with the Algerine pirates whom he humbled; and the echoes
of the forest were awakened with strange thunders then. As the great
guns were raised from the pits in which they had been cast, and were
declared ready for proof, Decatur ordered each one to be loaded with
repeated charges of powder and ball, and pointed into the woods. Then,
for miles between the grazed and quivering boles, crashed the missiles
of destruction, startling bear and deer and squirrel and raccoon, and
leaving traces of their passage which are even still occasionally
discovered. The cannon-balls themselves are now and then found imbedded
in the sand of the forest. In this manner the guns were tried which were
to thunder the challenge of America against the dens of Mediterranean
pirates.

Hanover, too, in its day of pride, furnished many a city with its iron
tubes for water and for gas, many a factory and workshop with its
castings, many a farmer with his tools but the glow of the furnace is
quenched forever now. The slowly gathering ferruginous deposits have
been exhausted, and three years have elapsed since the furnace-fires
were lighted. The blackened shell of the building stands in cold
decrepitude, a melancholy vestige of usefulness outlived. In consequence
of the stoppage of the works, Hanover has lost seven-eighths of its
population, and only about fifty inhabitants remain in the white
cottages grouped about the Big House, who are employed in agricultural
labors and occupations connected with the forest. Yet in this solitary
nook the elegances and the tastes of the most cultivated society are to
be found. The Big House, surrounded by its well-trimmed gardens sloping
down to the broad Rancocus, with its comfortable apartments, and the
diversified prospect which it commands, offers a resting-place which,
although deep in the genuine forest, combines urban refinement with the
quiet and seclusion of country-life.

Bright and early on the morning after my arrival, Friend B. was at my
door; and after a savory, if hasty breakfast, we sounded _boute-selle_.
Outside the gate a couple of forest-ponies were waiting,--stout, lively,
five-year-olds, equal, if not to a two-forty heat, yet to twenty miles
of steady trot without distress,--brown and sleek as you please, with
the knowingest eyes, and intelligence expressed in the impatient stamp
of the fore-foot, and good-humor in the twitching of the ear. Into the
saddle and off, with the cheery breeze to bathe us in exhilaration,
as it went humming around us laden with aromatic odors and mysterious
whisperings of the pine-trees to the sea,--through the dew-diamonded
grass of the little lawn at the top of the hill,--past the great elm
with its glistening foliage, and its carolling crew of just-awakened
birds,--then a canter down the sandy slope to the edge of the forest,
and again the pines are around us.

Before us lay a four-mile ride over a devious track among trees which my
companion knows by heart. Paths diverge into the forest on either side,
running north and south, east and west, straight and crooked, narrow
and broad; but B. follows unerringly the right, though undistinguished
trail. This knowledge of woodcraft,--how it appalls and wonder-strikes
the unlearned metropolitan, accustomed as he is to numbered houses and
name-boarded streets! No omnibus-driver threading the confusion of a
great thoroughfare could shape his course with greater assurance and
lack of hesitation than does B. through these endless avenues of
heavy-foliaged pines, broken only now and then by some tangled,
impenetrable brake of cedars, or by a charred and blackened clearing,
where the coaler has been at work. I gradually grew to believe that he
could call every tree by its name, as generals have been said to know
every soldier in their armies.

At length we reached a clearing of one or two acres in extent, the site
of Cranberry Lodge, and the terminus of our ride. In the centre of the
lone expanse two unusually tall pines were left standing, at the base of
which a curious structure nestled, which had been for several weeks the
occasional hermitage of my companion. It was built entirely with his own
hands, of cedar rails and white-pine planks, which he had cut and sawed
from trees that his own hands had felled. A queer little cabin, some
nine feet in length by five or six in breadth, standing all alone in the
forest, with not a neighbor within a distance of at least four miles!

Dismounting, we fastened our horses to a couple of saplings, and I was
introduced to the interior of Cranberry Lodge, which was tenanted only
by the "hired man," who, in the absence of Mr. B., reigned supreme in
the clearing. The dwelling I found no less primitive in internal than
in its external appearance. Three persons, moderately doubled up and
squeezed, could find room in the interior, which was furnished with a
bench for the safe-keeping of sundry pots, pans, and other culinary
necessaries, and with a shelf on which some blankets were laid,
constituting my companion's bedstead and bed, when he slept in Cranberry
Lodge. Beneath the "bunk" a small hole scooped in the sand stood in
lieu of a cellar, and contained a stock of provisions of Mr. B.'s own
cooking.

Such a backwoodish dwelling as Cranberry Lodge, existing in the year
1858, within seventy miles of New York, requires some explanation.
Its foundation is--pies! Cape Cod, the great emporium of the
cranberry-trade, has been running short for the last few years; in other
words, its supply is unequal to the demand. The heavy Britishers
have awakened to the fact, since 1851, that, of all condiments and
delicacies, cranberry-sauce and cranberry-pie are best in their way;
and John Bull takes many a barrel clean out of our market now. It so
happened that in the Pines of New Jersey cranberries superior to those
of Cape Cod have grown unheeded for centuries,--grew red and purple
and white and pink when Columbus was unthought of, as well as when
Washington passed through the Pines,--and for sixty or seventy years
have furnished a certain class of gypsies--of whom more anon--with
merchandise which sold well in the neighboring villages and cities.
No one thought of cultivating cranberries; no one, but the gypsies
aforesaid, of gathering them for sale. But it came to pass that a
certain farmer of Hanover was, like many another, unsuccessful during
several years. As a last resource, he purchased of the owner of the Big
House a cranberry-bog,--that is to say, one of the many marshy spots
which are interspersed in the forest,--for which he paid five dollars
the acre. There were a little more than one hundred acres in the bog. At
a cost of-some six hundred dollars Mr. F. fenced in his bog, and spent
three months in watching the cranberries as they ripened, to protect
them from depredation. To his intense astonishment, he found, in
October, that the yield was between two and three hundred bushels to the
acre, and that his land and fencing were paid for, with a balance left
over for next year. In consequence of this success, a little mania
for cranberry-farming seized upon the denizens of the Pines, and bogs
acquired a value they had never borne before. This was in 1857. Early in
1858, one of these plots of land, with an adjoining piece of forest, was
rented by Mr. B., who, like a right-down Yankee, determined to cultivate
it himself. So, with the aid of one hired man, a clearing was made in
his forest-patch, a hut built, four miles from the nearest habitation,
and the trees cut down were converted into rails, wherewith to fence in
the cranberry-land. At the time of my visit, the crop was just beginning
to think of getting ripe, and the great lazy vines, each one creeping
for several feet along the ground, were severally loaded with dozens of
delicately-tinted berries, plump and fair as British beauties, which
silently drew to themselves and absorbed the rays of the sun, turning
them to color and succulent subacidulousness. A most glorious sight that
same hundred-acre bog must have been a couple of weeks later, when the
berries had ripened, and a carpet of rosy redness blushed upwards to
the waning sun! Yet 1858 (the even year) was a bad season for
cranberries,--the yield was _only_ sufficient to pay for the land and
fencing, with a modicum over to begin 1859 with!

So cranberries grew to be institutions in the Pines, and all the bogs
for miles around the site of the first experiment were hired by sanguine
farmers. But the cranberry-cultivator has one enemy, which is neither
bird, nor worm, nor blight, but biped,--a Rat, two-legged, erect, or
moderately so, talking, even, in audible and intelligible speech,--the
Pine Rat, namely. Few but New Jerseymen, and of them chiefly those who
dwell about the forest, have heard of this human species; it has not
yet had its Agassiz nor its Wyman,--yet there it flourishes and repeats
itself!

My friend, Mr. B., considerately undertook to initiate me into some
of the mysteries of this race, which has proved minatory, though not
destructive, to his blushing crop,--and accordingly led me through brake
and brier, past wild and gloomy cedar-swamps, over brooks insecurely
bridged with fallen logs, or, perchance, with stepping-blocks of
pine-stumps, far into the silent forest, and to a little dell or
dingle,--a natural clearing,--where a couple of tents were pitched, and
the smoke of a struggling fire told infallibly of human neighborhood.
The barking of a splenetic little terrier brought from one of the tents
a man of some fifty years, lank and gaunt of visage, with matted hair,
and wild, uncivilized eyes, dressed in a ragged jacket and what had once
been a pair of trousers. His face wore no expression of intelligence;
but a look of intense, though animal cunning lurked in his eyes. While I
was gazing on this individual, who stood in silence by his tent, there
emerged from the other an ancient female, who might have been eighty
years of age, but who hobbled towards us with much briskness.

"Good evening, Hannah Butler," said Mr. B.; "I've brought you some
tomatoes from the Big House. This is my friend, Mr. Smith of York."

Mr. Smith of York (grimly repressing a smile, as his mischievous memory
whispered something about Brooks of Sheffield) bowed gravely to Mrs.
Butler. Mr. B. whispers,--"That's the Queen of the Pine Rats!" Hannah
meanwhile mumbles over one of the fleshy tomatoes.

The man whom we had first seen held in his hand a tattered shawl, with
which he now began patching a portion of his tent, saying at the same
time that there was a storm a-brewing.

"Ay, is there!" said Mrs. Butler; "and a storm like the one when I seed
Leeds's devil"--

"Hush!" interrupted her ragged companion, with a look of terror. "What's
the good o' namin' him, and allus talkin' about him, when yer don't
never know as he ar'n't byside ye?"

"I'll devil yer!" shrieked the crone, through a half-eaten tomato.
"Finish mendin' up yer cover, yer mean cranberry-thief!"

The spiteful terrier, which had meanwhile evinced an unpleasant interest
in the thickness of my pantaloons, added his yelping to the clamor, and
Mr. B., pointing to the clouds, thought we had better hasten homewards.
So we bade farewell to Hannah and her nephew, as I learned that the
unfortunate vessel of her wrath in reality was, and dived into the
gloomy recesses of the Pines again.

Long ere we got back to Cranberry Lodge, all doubts of an impending
tempest had disappeared. The eastern sky, cloudless an hour before,
was now overhung with a livid bank of ash-gray clouds, which were
incessantly riven by broad and terrible flashes of silent lightning. A
slight westerly breeze was blowing, and evidently impeded the progress
of the storm, which was beating up from seaward against the wind.
Plunging through prickly thickets and dashing through the turbid brooks,
we hastened toward the clearing, committed Cranberry Lodge to the
custody of the "hired man," and untied our horses from the saplings to
which they were made fast. In another moment we were on the back trail.
Scarcely, however, was the clearing shut out of view when a little
hesitating puff of wind from the east blew chill upon us; the breeze had
veered, and the tempest was at hand. In the twinkling of an eye, the
western horizon was overhung with the same ghastly storm-bank that
threatened in the east, while a monitory gust rustled through the
sighing pines, wildly twisting and tossing the undergrowth,--overspread
with a quivering pallor as it bent before the breeze,--and bade us be
prepared. Next moment, a clap of thunder, rattling like the artillery of
ten thousand sieges, or like millions of bars of iron dashed furiously
together, broke upon the forest. It was the most awful sound, terrible
even in its expected suddenness, that I ever heard. Simultaneously a
flash of purple lightning fell from the zenith to the horizon, splitting
the clouds asunder, and with it there descended rain in a cataract
rather than in torrents, so that in the twinkling of an eye the thirsty
sand was saturated, and bubbling pools of water pattered in the deluged
path. Crash after crash, each clap more terrific than the one preceding,
came the awful thunder; blinding flashes of lightning darted around
us;--but still our phlegmatic ponies galloped on, and only once started
violently, when a peal which really seemed as if its shock must burst
the heavens asunder dazed us momentarily with its almost unendurable
sound. The gloomy canopy above us, meanwhile, was overrun by incessant
streams of purple lightning, and the deluge of rain still fell. At
length we reached the Big House, (somewhat ostentatiously reducing the
speed of our horses to a walk as we came within sight of its embowered
windows,) and were soon dripping in the kitchen. A change of apparel,
calling into requisition Mexican _ponchos_ and other picturesque
garments, with a smoke beside a roaring fire, completely obviated
all dangerous consequences; nor was it without feelings of great
satisfaction that B. and myself watched tranquilly from our comfortable
ensconcement the beatings of the storm on the encircling forest.

The Big House, I found, was full of legends of the Pine Rats. This
extraordinary race of beings are lineal descendants of the New Jersey
Tories, who, during the Revolution, made the Pines their refuge, whence
they sallied in perpetual forays against the farms and dwellings of the
partisans of the opposite cause. Several hundreds of these fanatical
desperadoes made the forest their home, and laid waste the surrounding
townships by their sudden raids. Most barbarous cruelties were practised
on both sides, in the contests which continually took place between
Whigs and Tories, and the unnatural seven-years' war possessed nowhere
darker features than in the neighborhood of the New Jersey Pines.
Remains of these forest-freebooters are still discovered from time to
time, in the process of clearing the woods, and unmistakable relics are
occasionally met with in the denser portions of the forest, which must
have been comparatively open eighty years ago.

The degraded descendants of these Tories constitute the principal
difficulty with which a proprietor in this region has to contend.
Completely besotted and brutish in their ignorance, they are incapable
of obtaining an honest living, and have supported themselves, from a
time which may be called immemorial, by practising petty larceny on
an organized plan. The Pine Rat steals wood, steals game, steals
cranberries, steals anything, in fact, that his hand can be laid upon;
and woe to the property of the man who dares attempt to restrain him! A
few weeks may, perhaps, elapse, after the tattered savage has received a
warning or a reprimand, and then a column of smoke will be seen stealing
up from some quarter in the forest;--he has set the woods on fire!
Conflagrations of this kind will sometimes sweep away many hundreds of
acres of the most valuable timber; while accidental fires are also of
frequent occurrence. When indications of a fire are noticed, every
available hand--men, women, and children alike--is hurried to the spot
for the purpose of "fighting" it. Getting to leeward of the flames, the
"fighters" kindle a counter-conflagration, which is drawn or sucked
against the wind to the part already burning, and in this manner a
vacant space is secured, which proves a barrier to the flames. Dexterity
in fighting fires is a prime requisite in a forest overseer or workman.

"And now, something about Leeds's devil!" I said to my friend, after
satisfactory definition of the Pine Rat; "what fiend may he be, if you
please?"

"I will answer,--I will tell you," replies Mr. B. "There lived, in the
year 1735, in the township of Burlington, a woman. Her name was Leeds,
and she was shrewdly suspected of a little amateur witchcraft. Be that
as it may, it is well established, that, one stormy, gusty night, when
the wind was howling in turret and tree, Mother Leeds gave birth to a
son, whose father could have been no other than the Prince of Darkness.
No sooner did he see the light than he assumed the form of a fiend, with
a horse's head, wings of bat, and a serpent's tail. The first thought of
the newborn Caliban was to fall foul of his mother, whom he scratched
and bepommelled soundly, and then flew through the window out into the
village, where he played the mischief generally. Little children he
devoured, maidens he abused, young men he mauled and battered; and it
was many days before a holy man succeeded in repeating the enchantment
of Prospero. At length, however, Leeds's devil was laid,--but only for
one hundred years.

"During an entire century, the memory of that awful monster was
preserved, and, as 1835 drew nigh, the denizens of Burlington and the
Pines looked tremblingly for his rising. Strange to say, however, no one
but Hannah Butler has had a personal interview with the fiend; though,
since 1835, he has frequently been heard howling and screaming in the
forest at night, to the terror of the Rats in their lonely encampments.
Hannah Butler saw the devil, one stormy night, long ago; though some
skeptical individuals affirm, that very possibly she may have been led,
under the influence of liquid Jersey lightning, to invest a pine-stump,
or, possibly, a belated bear, with diabolical attributes and a Satanic
voice. However that may be, you cannot induce a Rat to leave his hut
after dark,--nor, indeed, will you find many Jerseymen, though of a
higher order of intelligence, who will brave the supernatural terrors of
the gloomy forest at night, unless secure in the strength of numbers."

The Pine Rat, in his vocation as a picker-up of every unconsidered
trifle, is an adept at charcoal-burning, on the sly. The business of
legitimate charcoal-manufacture is also largely practised in the Pines,
although the growing value of wood interferes sadly with the coalers.
Here and there, however, a few acres are marked out every year for
charring, and the coal-pits are established in the clearing made by
felling the trees. The "coaling," as it is technically termed, is an
assemblage of "pits," or piles of wood, conical in form, and about ten
feet in height by twenty in diameter. The wood is cut in equal lengths,
and is piled three or four tiers high, each log resting on the end of
that below it, and inclining slightly inwards. An opening is left in the
centre of the pile, serving as a chimney; and the exterior is overlaid
with strips of turf, called "floats," which form an almost air-tight
covering. When the pile is overlaid, fire is set at various small
apertures in the sides, and when the whole "pit" is fairly burning, the
chimney is closed, in order to prevent too rapid combustion, and the
whole pile is slowly converted into charcoal. The application of the
term "pit" to these piles is worthy of remark. It is due, of course,
to the fact, that for centuries it was customary to burn charcoal in
excavated pits, until it was discovered that gradual combustion could be
as well secured by another and less tedious method.

The Pine Rat glories in his surreptitious coal-pits. In secluded
portions of the forest, he may continually be discovered pottering over
a "coaling," for which he has stolen the wood. This, indeed, is his only
handicraft,--the single labor to which he condescends or is equal. Two
or three men sometimes band together and build themselves huts after
the curious fashion peculiar to the Rat, namely, by piling sticks or
branches in a slope on each side of some tall pine, so that a wigwam,
with the trunk of the tree in the centre, is constructed. Inside this
triangular shelter--the idea of which was probably borrowed from the
Indians--the Pine Rat ensconces himself with his whiskey-bottle at
night, crouching in dread of the darkness, or of Leeds's devil,
aforesaid. In this respect he singularly resembles the Bohemian
charcoal-burner, who trembles at the thought of Ruebezahl, that malicious
goblin, who has an army of mountain-dwarfs and gnomes at his command. So
long as the sunlight inspires our Rat with confidence, however, he will
work at his coal-pit, while one comrade is away in the forest, snaring
game, and another has perhaps, been dispatched to the precincts of
civilization with his wagon-load of coal. Yes! the Pine Rat sometimes
treads the streets of cities,--nay, even extends his wanderings to the
banks of the Delaware and the Hudson, to Philadelphia and Trenton,
to Jersey City and New York. Then, who so sharp as the grimy
tatterdemalion, who passes from street to street and from house to
house, with his swart and rickety wagon, and his jangling bell, the
discordant clangor of which, when we hear it, calls up horrible
recollections of the bells that froze our hearts in plague-stricken
cities of other lands, when doomed galley-slaves and _forcats_ wheeled
awful vehicles of putrefaction through the streets, clashing and
clinking their clamorous bells for more and still more corpses, and
foully jesting over the Death which they knew was already upon them! But
the long-drawn, monotonous, nasal cry of the charcoal-vender--who has
not heard it?--"Cha-r-coa'! Cha-r-coa'!"--is more cheerful than the
demoniac laughter of the desperate galley-slaves, and his bell sounds
musically when we hear it and think of theirs. Sometimes a couple of
these peregrinants may be seen to encounter each other in the streets,
and straightway there is an adjournment to the nearest bar-room, where
the most scientific method of "springing the arch" is discussed over a
glass of whiskey, at three cents the quart. Springing the arch, though
few may be able to interpret the phrase, is a trick by which every
housewife has suffered. It is the secret of piling the coal into the
measure in such a manner as to make the smaller quantity pass for the
larger, or, in other words, to make three pecks go for a bushel. So the
Pine Rat vindicates his claim to a common humanity with all the rest
of us men and women; for have not we all our secret and most approved
method of springing the arch,--of palming off our three short pecks for
a full and bounteous imperial bushel? Ah, yes! brothers and sisters,
whisper it, if you will, below your breath, but we all can do the Pine
Rat's trick!

We shall not suffer his company much longer in this world,--poor,
neglected, pitiable, darkened soul that he is, this fellow-citizen
of ours. He must move on; for civilization, like a stern, prosaic
policeman, will have no idlers in the path. There must be no vagrants,
not even in the forest, the once free and merry greenwood, our
policeman-civilization says; nay, the forest, even, must keep a-moving!
We must have farms here, and happy homesteads, and orchards heavy with
promise of cider, and wheat golden as hope, instead of silent aisles and
avenues of mournful pine-trees, sheltering such forlorn miscreations as
our poor cranberry-stealing friends! Railways are piercing the Pines;
surveyors are marking them out in imaginary squares; market-gardeners
are engaging land; and farmers are clearing it. The Rat is driven from
point to point, from one means of subsistence to another; and shortly,
he will have to make the bitter choice between regulated labor and
starvation clean off from the face of the earth. There is no room for
a gypsy in all our wide America! The Rat must follow the Indian,--must
fade like breath from a window-pane in winter!

In fact, the forest, left so long in its aboriginal savagery, is about
to be regenerated. A railroad is to be constructed, this year, which
will place Hanover and the centre of the forest within one hour's travel
of Philadelphia; and it is scarcely too much to anticipate, that, within
five years, thousands of acres, now dense with pines and cedars of a
hundred rings, will be laid out in blooming market-gardens and in fields
of generous corn. Such little cultivation as has hitherto been attempted
has been attended by the most astonishing results; and persons have
actually returned from the West and South, in order to occupy farms the
neighborhood, of Hanover.

In one respect _c'est dommage_; one is grieved to part with the game
that is now so plentiful in the Pines. Owing to the beneficent provision
of the laws of New Jersey, which stringently forbid every description of
hunting in the State during alternate periods of five years, game of
all kinds has an opportunity to multiply; and at the termination of the
season of rest, in October, 1858, there was some noble hunting in the
neighborhood of Hanover. Five years hence, bears and deer will be a
tradition, panthers and raccoons a myth, partridges and quails a vain
and melancholy recollection, in what shall then be known as what was
once the Pines.

* * * * *


THE LAST BIRD.


Little Bird that singest
Far atop, this warm December day,
Heaven bestead thee, that thou wingest,
Ere the welcome song is done, thy way

To more certain weather,
Where, built high and solemnly, the skies,
Shaken by no storm together,
Fixed in vaults of steadfast sapphire rise!

There, the smile that mocks us
Answers with its warm serenity;
There, the prison-ice that locks us
Melts forgotten in a purple sea.

There, thy tuneful brothers,
In the palm's green plumage waiting long,
Mate them with the myriad others,
Like a broken rainbow bound with song.

Winter scarce is hidden,
Veiled within this fair, deceitful sky;
Fly, ere, from his ambush bidden,
He descend in ruin swift and nigh!

By the Summer stately,
Truant, thou wast fondly reared and bred:
Dost thou linger here so lately,
Knowing not thy beauteous friend is dead,--

Like to hearts that, clinging
Fervent where their first delight was fed,
Move us with untimely singing
Of the hopes whose blossom-time is sped?

Beauties have their hour,
Safely perched on the Spring-budding tree;
For the ripened soul is trust and power,
And, beyond, the calm eternity.

* * * * *


THE UTAH EXPEDITION:

ITS CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES.

[Concluded.]


On the 3d of July, the Commissioners started on their return to the
States. During their stay at Salt Lake City, the doubt which they had
been led to entertain of the wisdom of the policy which they were the
agents to carry out, had ripened into a firm conviction.

The people who were congregated on the eastern shore of Lake Utah did
not begin to repair to their homes until the army had marched thirty or
forty miles away from the city; and even then there was a secrecy
about their movements which was as needless as it was mysterious. They
returned in divisions of from twenty to a hundred families each. Their
trains, approaching the city during the afternoon, would encamp on some
creek in its vicinity until midnight, when, if intended for the northern
settlements, they would pass rapidly through the streets, or else make
a circuit around the city-wall. August arrived before the return was
completed.

Morning after morning, one square after another was seen stripped of the
board barricades which had sheltered windows and doors from intrusion.
In front of every gateway wagons were emptying their loads of household
furniture. The streets soon lost their deserted aspect, though for many
days the only wayfarers were men,--not a woman being visible, except, by
chance, to the profane eyes of the invaders. It was near the end of July
before a single house was rented except to the intimate associates of
the Governor. Up to that time, those Gentiles who did not follow the
army to its permanent camp bivouacked on the public squares. By a Church
edict, all Mormons were forbidden to enter into business transactions
with persons outside their sect without consulting Brigham Young, whose
office was beset daily by a throng of clients beseeching indulgences
and instruction. Immediately after his return to the city, however,
he secluded himself from public observation, never appearing in the
streets, nor on the balconies of his mansion-house. He even encompassed
his residence with an armed guard.

Gradually, nevertheless, the necessities of the people induced a
modification of this system of non-intercourse. The Gentile merchants,
who were present with great wagon-trains containing all those articles
indispensable to the comfort of life, of which the Mormons stood so much
in need, refused to open a single box or bale until they could hire
storehouses. The permission was at length accorded, and immediately the
absolute external reserve of the people began to wear away. Both sexes
thronged to the stores, eager to supply themselves with groceries and
garments; but there they experienced a wholesome rebuff, for which some
of them were not entirely unprepared. The merchants refused to receive
the paper of the Deseret Currency Association with which the Territory
was flooded; and its notes were depreciated instantly by more than
fifty per cent. Many of the people were driven to barter cattle and
farm-produce for the articles they needed; and for the first time since
the establishment of the Church in Utah an audible murmur arose among
its adherents against its exactions. The sight of their neglected
farms was also calculated to bring the poorer agriculturists to sober
reflection. They perceived that the army, which they had been taught to
believe would commit every conceivable outrage, was, on the contrary,
demeaning itself with extreme forbearance and even kindness toward them,
and was supplying an ampler market for the sale of their produce than
they had enjoyed since the years when the overland emigration to
California culminated. Nevertheless, their regrets, if entertained at
all, found no public and concerted utterance. The authority of the
Church exacted a sullen demeanor toward all Gentiles.

The 24th of July, the great Mormon anniversary, was suffered to pass
without celebration; but its recurrence must have suggested anxious
thoughts and bitter recollections to a great part of the population.
When they remembered their enthusiastic declaration of independence
only one year before, the warlike demonstrations which followed it, the
prophecies of Young that the Lord would smite the army as he smote the
hosts of Sennacherib, the fever of hate and apprehension into which they
had been worked, and contrasted that period of excitement with their
present condition, they must, indeed, have found abundant material for
meditation. By the emigration southward they had lost at least four
months of the most valuable time of the year. Their families had been
subjected to every variety of exposure and hardship. Their ready money
had been extorted from them by the Currency Association, or consumed in
the expenses of transporting their movables to Lake Utah. And more than
all, the fields had so suffered by their absence, that the crops were
diminished to at least one-half the yield of an ordinary year. To a
community the mass of which lives from hand to mouth, this was a most
serious loss.

Almost all agriculture in Utah is carried on by the aid of irrigation.
From April till October hardly a shower falls upon the soil, which
parches and cracks in the hot sunshine. The settlements are all at the
base of the mountains, where they can take advantage of the brooks that
leap down through the canons. They are, therefore, necessarily scattered
along the line of the main Wahsatch range, from the Roseaux River, which
flows into the Salt Lake from the north, to the Vegas of the Santa
Clara,--a distance of nearly four hundred miles. The labor expended in
ditching has been immense, but it has been confined wholly to tapping
the smaller streams.

By damming the Jordan in Salt Lake Valley and the Sevier in Parawan
Valley, and distributing their water over the broad bottom-lands, on
which the only vegetation now is wild sage and greasewood, the area of
arable ground might be quintupled; and any considerable increase of
population will render such an undertaking indispensable; for the narrow
strip which is fertilized by the mountain-brooks yields scarcely more
than enough to supply the present number of inhabitants. Nowhere does it
exceed two or three miles in breadth, except along the eastern shore of
Lake Utah, where it extends from the base of the mountains to the verge
of the lake.

Almost all cereals and vegetables attain the utmost perfection,
rivalling the most luxuriant productions of California. Within the last
few years the cultivation of the Chinese sugar-cane has been introduced,
and has proved successful. In Salt Lake City considerable attention is
paid to horticulture. Peaches, apples, and grapes grow to great size, at
the same time retaining excellent flavor. The grape which is most common
is that of the vineyards of Los Angeles. In the vicinity of Provo an
attempt has been made to cultivate the tea-plant; and on the Santa Clara
several hundred acres have been devoted to the culture of cotton,
but with imperfect success. Flax, however, is raised in considerable
quantity. The fields are rarely fenced with rails, and almost never with
stones. The dirt-walls by which they are usually surrounded are built by
driving four posts into the ground, which support a case, ten or twelve
feet in length, made of boards. This is packed full of mud, which dries
rapidly in the intense heat of a summer noon. When it is sufficiently
dry to stand without crumbling, the posts are moved farther along and
the same operation is repeated.

The country is not dotted with farmhouses, like the agricultural
districts of the East. The inhabitants all live in towns, or "forts," as
they are more commonly called, each of which is governed by a Bishop.
These are invariably laid out in a square, which is surrounded by a
lofty wall of mere dirt, or else of adobe. In the smaller forts there
are no streets, all the dwellings backing upon the wall, and inclosing
a quadrangular area, which is covered with heaps of rubbish, and alive
with pigs, chickens, and children. The same stream which irrigates the
fields in the vicinity supplies the people with water for domestic
purposes. There are few wells, even in the cities. Except in Salt Lake
City and Provo, no barns are to be seen. The wheat is usually stored
in the garrets of the houses; the hay is stacked; and the animals are
herded during the winter in sheltered pastures on the low lands.

All the people of the smaller towns are agriculturists. In none of them
is there a single shop. In Provo there are several small manufacturing
establishments, for which the abundant water-power of the Timpanogas
River, that tumbles down the neighboring canon, furnishes great
facilities. The principal manufacturing enterprise ever undertaken in
the Territory--that for the production of beet-sugar--proved a complete
failure. A capital advanced by Englishmen, to the amount of more
than one hundred thousand dollars, was totally lost, and the result
discouraged foreigners from all similar investments. Rifles and
revolvers are made in limited number from the iron tires of the numerous
wagons in which goods are brought into the Valley. There are tanneries,
and several distilleries and breweries. In the large towns there are
many thriving mechanics; but elsewhere even the blacksmith's trade
is hardly self-supporting, and the carpenters and shoemakers are all
farmers, practising their trades only during intervals from work in the
fields.

The deficiency of iron, coal, and wood is the chief obstacle to the
material development of Utah. No iron-mines have been discovered, except
in the extreme southern portion of the Territory; and the quality of the
ore is so inferior, that it is available only for the manufacture of the
commonest household utensils, such as andirons. The principal coal-beds
hitherto found are in the immediate vicinity of Green River. There are
several sawmills, all run by water-power, scattered among the more
densely-wooded canons; but they supply hardly lumber enough to meet the
demand,--even the sugar-boxes and boot-cases which are thrown aside at
the merchants' stores being eagerly sought after and appropriated. The
most ordinary articles of wooden furniture command extravagant prices.

Nowhere is the absence of trees, the utter desolation of the scenery,
more impressive than in a view from the southern shore of the Great Salt
Lake. The broad plain which intervenes between its margin and the
foot of the Wahsatch Range is almost entirely lost sight of; the
mountain-slopes, their summits flecked with snow, seem to descend into
water on every side except the northern, on which the blue line of the
horizon is interrupted only by Antelope Island. The prospect in that
direction is apparently as illimitable as from the shore of an ocean.
The sky is almost invariably clear, and the water intensely blue, except
where it dashes over fragments of rock that have fallen from some
adjacent cliff, or where a wave, more aspiring than its fellows,
overreaches itself and breaks into a thin line of foam. Through a gap in
the ranges on the west, the line of the Great Desert is dimly visible.
The beach of the lake is marked by a broad belt of fine sand, the grains
of which are all globular. Along its upper margin is a rank growth of
reeds and salt grass. Swarms of tiny flies cover the surface of every
half-evaporated pool, and a few white sea-gulls are drifting on the
swells. Nowhere is there a sign of refreshing verdure except on the
distant mountainsides, where patches of green grass glow in the sunlight
among the vast fields of sage.

The buildings throughout the entire Territory are, almost without
exception, of adobe. The brick is of a uniform drab color, more pleasing
to the eye than the reddish hue of the adobes of New Mexico or the buff
tinge of many of those in California. In size it is about double that
commonly used in the States. The clay, also, is of very superior
quality. The principal stone building in the Territory is the Capitol,
at Fillmore, one hundred and fifty miles south of Salt Lake City. The
design of the architect is for a very magnificent edifice in the shape
of a Greek cross, with a rotunda sixty feet in diameter. Only one wing
has been completed, but this is spacious enough to furnish all needful
accommodation. The material is rough-hammered sandstone, of an intense
red.

The plan of Salt Lake City is an index to that of all the principal
towns. It is divided into squares, each side of which is forty rods
in length. The streets are more than a hundred feet wide, and are all
unpaved. There is not a single sidewalk of brick, stone, or plank. The
situation is well chosen, being directly at the foot of the southern
slope of a spur which juts out from the main Wahsatch range. Less than
twenty miles from the city, almost overshadowing it, are peaks which
rise to the altitude of nearly twelve thousand feet, from which the snow
of course never disappears. But during the summer months, when scarcely
a shower falls upon the valley, its drifts become dun-colored with dust
from the friable soil below, and present an aspect similar to that of
the Pyrenees at the same season. During most of the year, the rest of
the mountains which encircle the Valley are also capped with snow. The
residences of Young and Kimball are situated on almost the highest
ground within the city-limits, and the land slopes gradually down from
them to the south, east, and west. This inclination suggested the mode
of supplying the city with water. A mountain-brook, pure and cold,
bubbling from under snow-drifts, is guided from this highland down
the gently sloping streets in gutters adjoining both the sidewalks. A
municipal ordinance imposes severe penalties on any one who fouls it.
Young's buildings and gardens occupy an entire square, ten acres in
extent, as do also Kimball's. They consist, first, of the Mansion, a
spacious two-storied building, in the style of the Yankee-Grecian villas
which infest New England towns, with piazzas supported by Doric columns,
and a cupola which is surmounted by a beehive, the peculiar emblem of
the Mormons, although there is not a single honey-bee in the Territory.
This, like all its companions, is of adobe, but it is coated with
plaster, and painted white. Next to it is a small building, used
formerly as an office, in which the temporal business of the Governor
was transacted. By its side stands another office, on the same model,
but on a larger scale, devoted to the business of the President of the
Church. These are connected by passage-ways both with the Mansion and
with the Lion-House, which is the most westerly of the group, and is the
finest building in the Territory, having cost nearly eighty thousand
dollars. Like both the offices, it stands with a gable toward the
street, and the plaster with which it is covered has a light buff tinge.
The architecture is Elizabethan. Above a porch in front is the figure
of a recumbent lion, hewn in sandstone. On each of the sides, which
overlook the gardens, ten little windows project from the roof
just above the eaves. The whole square is surrounded by a wall of
cobblestones and mortar, ten or twelve feet in height, strengthened by
buttresses at intervals of forty or fifty feet. Massive plank gates bar
the entrances. In one corner is the Tithing-Office, where the faithful
render their reluctant tribute to the Lord. Only the swift city-creek
intervenes between this square and Kimball's, which is encompassed by a
similar wall. His buildings have no pretensions to architectural merit,
being merely rough piles of adobe scattered irregularly all over the
grounds.

The Temple Square is in the immediate neighborhood, and is of the same
size. It is inclosed by a wall even more massive than the others,
plastered and divided into panels. Near its southwestern corner stands
the Tabernacle, a long, one-storied building, with an immense roof,
containing a hall which will hold three thousand people. There the
Mormon religious services are conducted during the winter months; but
throughout the summer the usual place of gathering to listen to the
sermons is in "boweries," so called, which are constructed by planting
posts in the ground and weaving over them a flat roof of willow-twigs.
An excavation near the centre of the square, partially filled with dirt
previously to the exodus to Provo, marks the spot where the Temple is
to rise. It is intended that this edifice shall infinitely surpass in
magnificence its predecessor at Nauvoo. The design purports to be a
revelation from heaven, and, if so, must have emanated from some one
of the Gothic architects of the Middle Ages whose taste had become
bewildered by his residence among the spheres; for the turrets are to be
surmounted by figures of sun, moon, and stars, and the whole building
bedecked with such celestial emblems. Only part of the foundation-wall
has yet been laid, but it sinks thirty feet deep and is eight feet broad
at the surface of the ground. Its length, according to the heavenly
plan, is to be two hundred and twenty feet, and its width one hundred
and fifty feet. Beside the Tabernacle and the incipient Temple, the only
considerable building within the square is the Endowment-House, where
those rites are celebrated which bind a member to fidelity to the Church
under penalty of death, and admit him to the privilege of polygamy.

The other principal buildings within the city are the Council-House,
a square pile of sandstone, once used as the Capitol,--and the County
Court-House, yet unfinished, above which rises a cupola covered with
tin. Most of the houses in the immediate vicinity of Young's are two
stories high, for that is the aristocratic quarter of the town. In
the outskirts, however, they never exceed one story, and resemble in
dimensions the innumerable cobblers'-shops of Eastern Massachusetts.

None of the streets have names, except those which bound the Temple
Square and are known as North, South, East, and West Temple Streets, and
also the broad avenue which receives the road from Emigration Canon and
is called Emigration Street. Except on East Temple or Main Street, which
is the business street of the city, the houses are all built at least
twenty feet back from the sidewalk, and to each one is attached a
considerable plot of ground. There is no provision for lighting the
streets at night. The cotton-wood trees along the borders of the gutters
have attained a considerable growth during the eight or nine years since
they were planted, and afford an agreeable shade to all the sidewalks.

Around a great portion of the city stretches a mud wall with embrasures
and loopholes for musketry, which was built under Young's direction in
1853, ostensibly to guard against Indian attacks, but really to keep
the people busy and prevent their murmuring. To the east of this runs a
narrow canal, which was dug by the voluntary labor of the Saints, nearly
fifteen miles to Cottonwood Creek, for the transportation of stone to be
used in building the Temple.

Just outside the city-limits, near the northeastern corner of the wall,
lies the Cemetery, on a piece of undulating ground traversed by deep
gullies, and unadorned even by a solitary tree,--the only vegetation
sprouting out of its parched soil being a melancholy crop of weeds
interspersed with languid sunflowers. The disproportion between the
deaths of adults and those of children, which has been a subject for
comment by every writer on Mormonism, is peculiarly noticeable there.
Most of the graves are indicated only by rough boards, on which are
scrawled rudely, with pencil or paint, the names and ages of the dead,
and usually also verses from the Bible and scraps of poetry; but among
all the inscriptions it is remarkable that there is not a single
quotation from the "Book of Mormon." The graves are totally neglected
after the bodies are consigned to them. Nowhere has a shrub or a flower
been planted by any affectionate hand, except in one little corner of
the inclosure which is assigned to the Gentiles, between whose dust and
that of the Mormons there seems to exist a distinction like that which
prevails in Catholic countries between the ashes of heretics and those
of faithful churchmen. The mode of burial is singularly careless. A
funeral procession is rarely seen; and such instances are mentioned by
travellers as that of a father bearing to the grave the coffin of his
own child upon his shoulder.

The interiors of the houses are as neat as could be expected,
considering the extent of the families. Very often, three wives, one
husband, and half-a-dozen children will be huddled together in a
hovel containing only two habitable rooms,--an arrangement of course
subversive of decency. Few people are able to purchase carpets, and
their furniture is of the coarsest and commonest kind. There are few, if
any, families which maintain servants. In that of Brigham Young, each
woman has a room assigned her, for the neatness of which she is herself
responsible;--Young's own chamber is in the rear of the office of the
President of the Church, upon the ground floor. The precise number
of the female inmates can often be computed from the exterior of the
houses. These being frequently divided into compartments, each with its
own entrance from the yard, and its own chimney, and being generally
only one story in height, the number of doors is an exact index to that
of residents.

The domestic habits of the people vary greatly according to their
nativity. Of the forty-five thousand inhabitants of the Territory, at
least one-half are immigrants from England and Wales,--the scum of the
manufacturing towns and mining districts, so superstitious as to have
been capable of imbibing the Mormon faith,--though between what is
preached in Great Britain and what is practised in America there exists
a wide difference,--and so destitute in circumstances as to have been
incapable of deteriorating their fortunes by emigration. Possibly
one-fifth are Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians. This allows a remainder of
three-tenths for the native American element. An Irishman or a German is
rarely found. Of the Americans, by far the greater proportion were born
in the Northeastern States; and the three principal characters in the
history of the Church--Smith, Young, and Kimball--all originated in
Vermont, but were reared in Western New York, a region which has been
the hot-bed of American _isms_ from the discovery of the Golden Bible to
the outbreak of the Rochester rappings. This American element maintains,
in all affairs of the Church, its natural political ascendency. Of the
twelve Apostles only one is a foreigner, and among the rest of the
ecclesiastical dignitaries the proportion is not very different.

The Scandinavian Mormons are very clannish in their disposition. They
occupy some settlements exclusively, and in Salt Lake City there is one
quarter tenanted wholly by them, and nicknamed "Denmark," just as that
portion of Cincinnati monopolized by Germans is known as "over the
Rhine." Like their English and Welsh associates, they belonged to the
lowest classes of the mechanics and peasantry of their native countries.
They are all clownish and brutal. Their women work in the fields.
In their houses and gardens there is no symptom of taste, or of the
recollection of former and more innocent days; while in every cottage
owned by Americans there is visible, at least, a clock, or a pair of
China vases, or a rude picture, which once held a similar position in
some farm-house in New England.

It is not intended to discuss here the cardinal points of the Mormon
faith, for the subject is too extensive for the limits of this article.
A great misapprehension, however, prevails concerning polygamy, that it
was one of the original doctrines of the Church. On the contrary, it was
expressly prohibited in the Book of Mormon, which declares:--

"Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which
thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord. ... Wherefore hearken to
the word of the Lord: There shall not any man among you have save it
be one wife, and concubines he shall have none; for I, the Lord God,
delight in the chastity of women."--p. 118.

Up to this date, there have been four eras in the history of polygamy
among the Mormons: the first, from about 1833 to 1843, during which it
was practised stealthily only by those Church leaders to whom it was
considered prudent to impart the secret; the second, from 1843 to 1852,
during which its existence was known to the Church, but denied to the
world; the third, from 1852 to 1856, during which it was left to the
discretion of individuals whether to adopt its practice or not; and the
fourth, since 1856, when its acceptance was inculcated as essential to
happiness in this world and salvation in the next. It was the inevitable
tendency of Mormonism, like every other religious delusion, from the
advent of John of Leyden to that of the Spiritualists, to disturb the
natural relation of the sexes under the Christian dispensation. The
mystery surrounding the subject constituted the most attractive charm of
the religion, both to the initiated and to those who were seeking to be
admitted to the secrets of the Endowment,--for the Endowed alone possess
the privilege of a plurality of wives. But until the community had
become firmly fixed in Utah, no one dared to justify or even to proclaim
the doctrine. At the time of the passage of the Organic Act of the
Territory, in the autumn of 1850, and repeatedly during the next
two years, prominent Mormons at Washington and New York denied its
existence, with the most solemn asseverations. It was on Sunday, August
29th, 1852, that it was openly avowed at Salt Lake City,--Brigham Young
on that day producing the copy of a revelation, pretended to have
been received by Smith on the 12th of July, 1843, which annulled
the monogamic injunctions of the Book of Mormon, and stating, that,
"although the doctrine of polygamy has not been preached by the elders,
the people have believed in it for years." Upon the same occasion,
another doctrine was urged,--that human beings upon earth propagate
merely bodies, the souls which inhabit them being begotten by spirits in
heaven.

The number of the wives of many of the principal Mormons has been
greatly exaggerated. Attached to Young's establishment in Salt Lake
City, there are only sixteen. His first wife occupies the Mansion-House
exclusively, while the others are quartered in the Lion-House. Besides
these, he has probably fifty or sixty more, scattered all over the
Territory, and in the principal cities of the United States and of Great
Britain. His living children do not exceed thirty in number. Kimball's
wives, resident in Salt Lake City, are quite as numerous as Young's, and
his children even more so. Both of them aim to reproduce the domestic
life of the Biblical patriarchs; and within the squares which they
occupy their descendants dwell also, with their wives and progeny, all
of them acknowledging the control of the head of the family. The harems
of very few of the Church dignitaries approach these in magnitude. The
extent of the practice of polygamy cannot be determined by a residence
in Salt Lake City alone, for it is there that those Church officers
congregate whose wealth enables them to maintain large families. As
the traveller journeys northward or southward, he finds the instances
diminish in almost exact proportion to his remoteness from the central
ecclesiastical influence. There is even a sect of Mormons, called
Gladdenites, after their founder, one Gladden Bishop, who deny the
right of Young to supreme authority over the Church, and discountenance
polygamy. No computation of their number can be made, for few of them
dare avow their heresy, on account of the persecution which is the
invariable result. The leaders of this sect maintain that a majority of
the married men in Utah have but one wife each, and their assertion has
never been controverted.

One of the most monstrous results of the practice is the indifference
with which an incestuous connection is tolerated. The cohabitation, with
the same man, of a mother, and her daughter by a previous marriage, is
not unfrequent; and there are other instances even more disgusting. One
or two of them will exemplify the character of the whole. One George D.
Watt, an Englishman, residing at Salt Lake City, has for his fourth
wife his own half-sister, who had been previously divorced from Brigham
Young; and one Aaron Johnson, the Bishop of the town of Springville,
on Lake Utah, has seven wives, four of whom are sisters, and his own
nieces. Young himself has declared in print, that he looks forward to
the time when his son by one wife shall marry his daughter by another.
Marriages also are effected with girls who are mere children. Accustomed
from their cradles to sights and sounds calculated to impart precocious
development, they mature rapidly, and few of them remain single after
attaining the age of sixteen. They look around for husbands, and
understand, that, if they marry young men and become first wives, in
course of time other wives will be associated with them; and they
conclude, therefore, that it is as well for themselves to unite with
some Bishop or High-Priest, with perhaps half-a-dozen wives already, who
is able to feed his family well and clothe them decently; so they plunge
into polygamy at once. Another result of the practice is universal
obscenity of language among both sexes. The published sermons of the
Mormon leaders are utterly vile in this respect, although they are
somewhat expurgated before being printed. They consider no language
profane from which the name of the Deity is exempted.

There is, unquestionably, much unhappiness in families where polygamy
prevails,--daily bickering, jealousies, and heart-burnings,--but it
is carefully concealed from the knowledge of the public. If domestic
troubles become so aggravated as to be unendurable, recourse is usually
had to Brigham Young for a divorce. There are women in Salt Lake City
who have been married and divorced half-a-dozen times within a year. The
first wife maintains a supremacy over all the others. On the occasion
of her marriage, a civil magistrate usually officiates, and the rite of
"sealing" is afterwards administered by Young. By the civil process,
in the cant language of the Mormons, she is bound to her husband "for
time," and by the ecclesiastical solemnization "for eternity." Every
wife taken after the first is called a "spiritual," and is "sealed"
ecclesiastically only, not civilly. It follows, as a legitimate
consequence, that the first wife of one man "for time" may be the
"spiritual" wife of another man "for eternity." The power of sealing and
unsealing is vested in the Head of the Church, which, however, he may
and does assign, with certain limitations, to deputies. The ceremony is
performed in a room in the Mansion-House within Brigham's square, which
is furnished with an altar and kneelng-benches. In every instance of
divorce, the woman is supplied with a printed certificate of the fact,
for which a fee of ten or eleven dollars is exacted. When a polygamist
dies, it becomes the duty of his "next friend" to care for his wives.
Thus, when Young became the President of the Church, he succeeded to all
the widows of Joseph Smith.

Every year some modification of the system is effected, which tends to
increase still further the confusion in the relations of the sexes. The
latest is the doctrine, (which, like polygamy in its earlier stages, is
believed, but not avowed,) that absence is temporary death, so far as
concerns the transference of wives. This is intended to apply to the two
or three hundred missionaries who are dispatched yearly to all parts
of the globe, from Stockholm to Macao. It is astonishing that these
missionary efforts, which have been pursued with unremitting zeal for
the last twenty years, should not have ingrafted upon Mormonism some
degree of that refinement which is supposed to result from travel. On
the contrary, they seem to have elaborated the natural brutality of the
Anglo-Saxon character; and especially with regard to polygamy, their
effect has been to acquaint the people of Utah with the grossest
features of its practice in foreign lands, and encourage them to
imitation. Every Mormon, prominent in the Church, however illiterate
in other respects, is thoroughly acquainted with the extent and
characteristics of polygamy in Asiatic countries, and prepared to defend
his own domestic habits, in argument, by historical and geographical
references. Not one of their missionaries has ever been admitted to
intercourse with the higher classes of European society. Their sphere
of labor and acquaintance has been entirely among those whom they would
term the lowly, but who might also be called the credulous and vulgar.
The abuse of a knowledge of the machinery of the Masonic order--from
which they have been formally excluded--is one of the least evil of
their practices, not only abroad, but at home. Of the Endowment, one
apostate Mormon has declared that "its signs, tokens, marks, and ideas
are plagiarized from Masonry"; and it was a notorious fact, that every
one of the Mormon prisoners at the camp at Fort Bridger was accustomed
to endeavor to influence the sentinels at the guard-tents by means of
the Masonic signs.

This cursory review of the domestic condition of the Mormons would not
be complete without some allusion to the Indians who infest the whole
country. In the North, having their principal village at the foot of the
Wind River Mountains, in the southeastern corner of Oregon, is the tribe
of Mountain Snakes or Shoshonees, and the kindred tribe of Bannocks.
Throughout all the valleys south of Salt Lake City are the numerous
bands of the great tribe of Utahs. Still farther south are the Pyides.
The Snakes are superior in condition to any of the others; for, during
a portion of the year, they have access to the buffalo, which have not
crossed the Wahsatch Range into the Great Basin, within the recollection
of the oldest trapper. The only wild animals common in the country of
the Utahs are the hare, or "jackass-rabbit," the wild-cat, the wolf, and
the grizzly bear. There are few antelope or elk. Trout abound in the
mountain-brooks and in Lake Utah. In the Salt Lake, as in the Dead Sea,
there are no fish. Before the advent of the Mormons, the habits of all
the Utah bands were very degraded. No agency had been established among
them. They had few guns and blankets. For several years they were
engaged in constant hostilities with the people of the young and feeble
settlements,--their own method and implements of warfare improving
steadily all the while. Ultimately, however, the Mormons inaugurated a
system of Indian policy, which was highly successful. They propagated
their religion among the Utahs, baptized some of the most prominent
chiefs into the Church, fed and clothed them, and thereby acquired an
ascendency over most of the bands, which they attempted to use to the
detriment of the army during the winter of 1857-8, but without success.
Brigham Young, being vested with the superintendence of Indian affairs,
during his entire term of service as Governor, abused the functions of
that office. He taught the tribe, that there was a distinction between
"Americans" and "Mormons,"--and that the latter were their friends,
while they were free to commit any depredations on the former which
they might see fit. These infamous teachings were counteracted with
considerable success by Dr. Hurt, the Indian Agent, to whom allusion has
frequently been made; but it was impossible wholly to neutralize their
effect. Some of the Mormons even took squaws for spiritual wives; and in
all the settlements, from Provo to the Santa Clara, there are scores of
half-breed children, acknowledging half-a-dozen mothers, some white,
some red. The Utahs, though a beggarly, are a docile tribe. Several
Government farms have now been established among them, and they display
more than ordinary aptitude for work. But they require to be spurred to
regular labor. None of the charges which have been preferred against
the Mormons, of direct participation in the murder of Americans by
the Indians in the southern portion of the Territory, have ever been
substantiated by legal evidence; but no person can become familiar with
the relations which they sustain to those tribes, without attaching
to them some degree of credibility. The most noted instances were the
slaughter of Captain Gunnison and his exploring party, near Lake Sevier,
in October, 1853; and the horrible massacre of more than a hundred
emigrants on their way to California, at the Mountain Meadows, still
farther south, in September, 1857, from which only those children were
spared who were too young to speak.

The history of events in Utah since the encamping of the army in Cedar
Valley and the return of the Mormons to the northern settlements is too
recent to need to be recounted. It has been established by satisfactory
experiments, that law is powerless in the Territory when it conflicts
with the Church. No Gentile, whose property was confiscated during the
rebellion, has yet obtained redress. The legislature refuses to provide
for the expenses of the District Courts while enforcing the Territorial
laws. The grand juries refuse to find indictments. The traverse juries
refuse to convict Mormons. The witnesses perjure themselves without
scruple and without exception. The unruly crowd of camp-followers, which
is the inseparable attendant of an army, has concentrated in Salt
Lake City, and is in constant contact and conflict with the Mormon
population. An apprehension prevails, day after day, that the presence
of the army may be demanded there to prevent mob-law and bloodshed.
The Governor is alien in his disposition to most of the other Federal
officers; and the Judges are probably already on their way to the
States, prepared to resign their commissions. The whole condition of
affairs justifies a prediction made by Brigham Young, June 17th, 1855,
in a sermon, in which he declared:--

"Though I may not be Governor here, my power will not be diminished. No
man they can send here will have much influence with this community,
unless he be the man of their choice. Let them send whom they will, it
does not diminish my influence one particle."

The consequences of the Expedition, therefore, have not corresponded
to the original expectation of its projectors. So far as the political
condition of the Territory is concerned, the result, filtered down,
amounts simply to a demonstration of the impolicy of applying the
doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty as a rule for its government. The
administration of President Polk was an epoch in the history of
the continent. By the annexation of Texas a system of territorial
aggrandizement was inaugurated; and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, by
which California, Utah, and New Mexico were acquired, was a legitimate
result. Every child knows that the tendency is toward the acquisition of
all North America. But the statesmen who originated a policy so
grand did not stop to establish a system of Territorial government
correspondent to its necessities. The character of such a Territorial
policy is now the principal subject upon which the great parties of
the nation are divided; and its development will constitute the chief
political achievement of the generation. On one side, it is proposed to
leave each community to work out its own destiny, trusting to Providence
for the result. On the other, it is contended, that the only safe
doctrine is, that supreme authority over the Territories resides in
Congress, which it is its duty to assign to such hands and in such
degrees as it may deem expedient, with a view to create homogeneous
States; that the same influences which moulded Minnesota into a State
homogeneous to Massachusetts might operate on Cuba, or Sonora and
Chihuahua, without avail; and that to various districts the various
methods should be applied which a father would employ to secure the
obedience and welfare of his children.

At the very outset, the Territory of Utah now presents itself as a
subject for the application of the one system or the other. To all
intents and purposes, the Mormons are proved to be a people more foreign
to the population of the States than the inhabitants of Cuba or Mexico.
Alien in great part by birth, and entirely alien in religion, there
never can occur in the history of the country an instance of a community
harder to govern, with a view to adapt it to harmonious association
with the States on the Atlantic and the Pacific. It is undeniably
demonstrated that it is unsafe to trust it to administer a government in
accordance with republican ideas; for it acknowledges a higher law than
even the human conscience, in the will of a person whom it professes
to believe a vicegerent of Divinity, and in obedience to whom perjury,
robbery, incest, and even murder, may be justifiable,--for his commands
are those of Heaven. It is obvious that it is fruitless to anticipate
fair dealing from a people professing such doctrines; and the result has
shown, that, in transactions with Mormons, even under oath, no one who
does not acknowledge a standard of religious belief similar to their own
can count upon justice any farther than they may think it politic
to accord it. The army is, indeed, placed in a position to suppress
instantaneously another forcible outbreak; but everybody is aware that
there are means of annulling the operation of law quite as effectually
as by an uprising in arms. Recent proceedings in the courts of the
extreme Southern States have caused this fact to be keenly appreciated.
The pirates who sailed the slavers "Echo" and "Wanderer" yet remain to
be punished. So far as South Carolina and Georgia are concerned, the law
declaring the slave-trade piracy is a dead letter; and the sentiment
which prevails toward it in Charleston and Savannah is an imperfect
index of that which is manifested at Salt Lake City toward all national
authority.

The legislation of Utah has been conducted with a view to precisely the
condition of affairs which now exists, and the Territorial statute-book
shows that the transfer of executive power from Brigham Young had long
been anticipated. It is impracticable to adduce, in this place, proof of
the fact _in extenso_; but a brief enumeration of some of the principal
statutes will indicate the character of the entire code. An act exists
incorporating the Mormon Church with power to hold property, both real
and personal, to an indefinite extent, exempt from taxation, coupled
with authority to establish laws and criteria for its safety,
government, comfort, and control, and for the punishment of all offences
relating to fellowship, according to its covenants. By this act the
Church is invested with absolute and perpetual sovereignty. Under it
the whole system of polygamy is conducted, for plural marriages are
sanctioned by the covenants; the Danite organization is authorized, for
it is instituted for the comfort and control of the Church, and the
punishment of offences relative to fellowship; the burden of the taxes
is thrown in a yearly increasing ratio upon Gentiles, for the Church
property exempted from taxation amounts already to several millions
of dollars, and increases every day; and the treasonable rites of the
Endowment are celebrated, and the inferior members of the Church tithed
and pillaged, for the benefit of the First Presidency and the Twelve
Apostles. Acts also exist legalizing negro and Indian slavery. There are
within the Territory at the present time not more than fifty or sixty
negroes, but there are several hundred Indians, held in servitude.
These are mostly Pyides, into whose country some of the Utah bands make
periodical forays, capturing their young women and children, whom they
sell to the Navajoes in New Mexico, as well as to the Mormons. There are
other acts, which rob the United States judges of their jurisdiction,
civil, criminal, and in equity, and confer it on the Probate Courts;
which forbid the citation of any reports, even those of the Supreme
Court of the United States, during any trial; which regulate the descent
of property so as to include the issue of polygamic marriages among the
legal heirs; which withdraw from exemption from attachment the entire
property of persons suspected of an intention to leave the Territory;
which authorize the invasion of domiciles for purposes of search, upon
the simple order of any judicial officer; which legalize the rendition
of verdicts in civil cases upon the concurrence of two-thirds of the
jurors; which command attorneys to present in court, under penalty
of fine and imprisonment, in all cases, every fact of which they are
cognizant, "whether calculated to make against their clients or not";
which restrict the institution of proceedings against adulterers to the
husband or the wife of one of the guilty parties; which levy duties
on all goods imported into the Territory for sale; which abolish
the freedom of the ballot-box, by providing that each vote shall be
numbered, and a record kept of the names of the electors with the
numbers attached, which, together with the ballots, shall be preserved
for reference; and which empower the county courts to impose taxes to
an indefinite amount on whomsoever they may please, for the erection
of fortifications within their respective jurisdictions. But the most
extraordinary and unconstitutional series of acts--no less than sixty
in number--exists with regard to the primary disposal of the soil, with
which the Territorial legislature is expressly forbidden by the Organic
Act to interfere. These pretend to confer upon Church dignitaries, and
especially on Brigham Young and his family, tracts of land probably
amounting in the aggregate to more than ten thousand square miles, as
well as the exclusive right to establish bridges and ferries over the
principal rivers in the Territory,--together with the exclusive use of
those streams flowing down from the Wahsatch Mountains which are most
valuable for irrigating and manufacturing purposes. The virtual control
of the settlement of the eastern portion of Utah is thus vested in
the Church; for these grants include almost all the lands which are
immediately valuable for occupation. After a glance at a list of them,
it is not hard to understand the causes of the great disparity in the
distribution of wealth among the Mormons. They have been so allotted as
to benefit a very few at the expense of the whole people; and they are
protected by a terrorism which no one dares to confront in order to
challenge their validity. The majority of the population are ignorant
of their rights,--and too pusillanimous to maintain them against the
hierarchy, if they were not. They therefore contribute to its coffers
not merely their tithing, but heavy exactions also for grazing their
cattle on pastures to which they themselves have just as much title as
the nominal proprietors, and for grinding their grain and purchasing
their lumber at mills on streams which are of right common to all the
settlers on their banks.

From the Utah Expedition, then, it has become patent to the world, if
it is not to ourselves, that the Mormons are unwilling to administer a
republican form of government, if not incapable of doing so. The author
of the letter recently addressed by "A Man of the Latin Race" to the
Emperor Napoleon, on the subject of French influence in America,
comments especially upon this fact as symptomatic of the disintegration
of this republic; and allusion is made to it in every other foreign
review of our political condition. It is obviously inconsistent with our
national dignity that a remedy should not be immediately applied; but
when we seek for such, only two courses of action are discernible, in
the maze of political quibbles and constitutional scruples that at once
suggest themselves. One is, to repeal the Organic Act and place the
Territory under military control; the other is, to buy the Mormons out
of Utah, offering them a reasonable compensation for the improvements
they have made there, as also transportation to whatever foreign region
they may select for a future abode.

The embarrassments which might result from the adoption of the former
course are obvious. It would be attended with immense expense, and would
embitter the Mormons still more against the National Government; and
it would also deter Gentiles from emigrating to a region where three
thousand Federal bayonets would constitute the sole guaranty of the
security of their persons and property.

The other course is not only practicable, but humane and expedient.
During his whole career, Brigham Young committed no greater mistake than
when he settled in Utah a community whose recruits are almost without
exception drawn from foreign lands; for, since the removal from
Illinois, every attempt to propagate Mormonism in the American States
has been a failure. Every avenue of communication with Utah is
necessarily obstructed. No railroad penetrates to within eleven hundred
miles of Salt Lake Valley. There is no watercourse within four hundred
miles, on which navigation is practicable. Neither the Columbia nor the
Colorado empties into seas bordered by nations from which the Mormons
derive accessions; and the length of a voyage up the Mississippi,
Missouri, and Yellowstone forbids any expectation that their channels
will ever become a pathway to the centre of the continent. The road to
Utah must always lead overland, and travel upon it is the more expensive
from the fact that no great passenger-transportation companies exist at
either of the termini. Each family of emigrants must provide its own
outfit of provisions, wagons, and oxen, or mules. Through the agency of
what is called the Perpetual Emigration Fund of the Church, the capital
of which amounts to several millions of dollars,--which was instituted
professedly to befriend, but really to fleece the foreign converts,--few
Englishmen arrive at Salt Lake City without having exhausted their own
means and incurred an amount of debt which it requires the labor of many
years to discharge. The physical sufferings of the journey, also, are
severe and often fatal. The bleak cemetery at Salt Lake City contains
but a small proportion of the Mormon dead. Along the thousand miles of
road from the Missouri River to the Great Lake, there stand, thicker
than milestones, memorials of those who failed on the way. A rough
board, a pile of stones, a grave ransacked by wolves, crown many a swell
of the bottom-lands along the Platte; and across the broad belt of
mountains there is no spot so desolate as to be unmarked by one of these
monuments of the march of Mormonism.

As these difficulties of transit subside under the surge of population
toward the new State of Oregon, or to the gold-diggings on the
head-waters of the South Fork of the Platte, an element must permeate
Utah which would be fatal to the supremacy of the Church. That depends,
as has been so often repeated, upon isolation. Already the presence of
the army with its crowd of unruly dependents has begun to disturb it.
In the trail of the troops, like sparks shed from a rocket, a legion
of mail-stations and trading-posts have sprung up, which materially
facilitate communication with the East. A horseman, starting now from
Fort Leavenworth, with a good animal, can ride to Salt Lake City,
sleeping under cover every night; while in July, 1857, when the army
commenced its march from the frontier, there were stretches of more than
three hundred miles without a single white inhabitant. On the west,
under the shadow of the Sierra Nevada, there is a settlement of several
thousand Gentiles in Carson Valley, who, though nominally under the same
Territorial government with the Mormons, have no real connection with
them, politically, socially, or commercially, and are petitioning
Congress for a Territorial organisation of their own. A telegraphic wire
has already wound its way over the sierra among them, and will soon
palpitate through Salt Lake City in its progress toward the Atlantic.

Brigham Young perceives this inevitable advance of Christian
civilization toward his stronghold, as clearly as the most unprejudiced
spectator. No one is better aware than himself, that, if the great
industrial conception of the age, the Pacific Railroad, shall ever begin
to be realized, the first shovelful of dirt thrown on its embankments
will be the commencement of the grave of his religion and authority.
Among the projects with which his brain is busy is that of yet another
exodus; and it must be undertaken speedily, if at all,--for a generation
is growing up in the Church with an attachment for the land in which it
was reared. The pioneers of the faith, who were buffeted from Ohio to
Missouri, from Missouri to Illinois, and from Illinois to the Rocky
Mountains, are dwindling every year. Their migrations have been so
various, that no local sentiment would influence them against another
removal. Such a sentiment, if it exists at all among them, is not for
Utah, but for Missouri, where they believe that the capital will be
founded of that kingdom in which the Church in the progress of ages will
unite the world. They dropped upon the shores of the Salt Lake in 1847,
like birds spent upon the wing, only because they could not fly farther.

Two regions have been suggested for the ultimate resort of the Mormons:
one, the Mosquito Coast in Central America; the other, the Island of
Papua or New Guinea, among the East Indies. During the winter, while
the army lay encamped at Fort Bridger, Colonel Kinney, the colonizing
adventurer, endeavored to communicate from the East to Brigham Young an
offer to sell to the Church several millions of acres of land on the
Mosquito Coast, of which he purports to be the proprietor. His agent,
however, reached no farther than Green River. But during the spring of
1858, other agents, dispatched from California, were more successful in
reaching Salt Lake Valley. They were hospitably received by the Mormons,
but Young declined to enter into the negotiation. The other scheme--that
for an emigration to Papua--originated at Washington during the same
winter. It was eagerly seized upon by Captain Walter Gibson, the same
who was once imprisoned by the Dutch in Java. He put himself into
communication on the subject with Mr. Bernhisel, the Mormon delegate
to Congress, who appeared to regard the plan with favor. After it
was developed, as a step preliminary to transmitting it to Utah for
consideration, Mr. Bernhisel waited upon the President of the United
States in order to ascertain whether the cooperation of the National
Government in the undertaking could be expected. The reply of Mr.
Buchanan was fatal to the project, which he discountenanced as a vague
and wild dream.

Nevertheless, it may well be considered whether the movement toward Utah
appeared any less Quixotic in 1846 than does the idea of an emigration
to Papua now. On that island the Mormons would encounter no such
obstacles to material prosperity as their indomitable industry has
already conquered in Utah. They would find a fertile soil, a propitious
climate, and a native population which could be trained to docility.
Transplanted thither, they would cease to be a nuisance to America, and
would become benefactors to the world by opening to commerce a region
now valueless to Christendom, but of as great natural capacities as any
portion of the globe. The expense of their migration need not exceed
the amount already expended upon the Army of Utah, together with that
necessary to maintain it in its present position for the next five
years. Into the seats which they would relinquish on the border of
the Salt Lake a sturdy population would pour from the Valley of the
Mississippi, and develop an intelligent, Christian, and Republican
State. That portion of the Mormons which would not follow the fortunes
of the Church beyond the seas would soon become submerged, and the last
vestige of its religion and peculiar domestic life would disappear
speedily and forever from the continent.

For that consummation, every genuine Christian must fervently pray. If
the Message in the Book of Mormon be, as one of its own Apostles has
asserted, indeed "such, that, if false, none who persist in believing it
can be saved," the sooner this nation washes its hands of responsibility
for its toleration, the better for its credit in history. The
Constitution, to be sure, denies to Congress the power to pass laws
prohibiting the free exercise of religion; but it is the most monstrous
nonsense to argue that the Federal Government is bound thereby to
connive at polygamy, perjury, incest, and murder. There are principles
of social order which constitute the political basis of every state in
Christendom, that are violated by the practices of the Mormon Church,
and which this Republic is bound to maintain without regard to any
pretence that their transgressors act in pursuance of religious belief.
Thirty years ago, no other doctrine would have occurred to the mind
of an American statesman. It is only the special-pleadings and
constitutional hair-splittings by which Slavery has been forced under
national protection, that now impede Congressional intervention in the
affairs of Utah. The Christian Church of the United States, also, has a
duty to perform toward the Mormons, which has long been neglected. While
its missionaries have been shipped by the score to India and China, it
has been blind to the growth, upon the threshold of its own temple, of a
pagan religion more corrupt than that of the Brahmin. Never once has a
Christian preacher opened his lips in the valleys of Utah; and yet the
surplice of a Christian priest would be a sight more portentous to the
Mormon, on his own soil, than the bayonet of the Federal soldier.




BULLS AND BEARS.

[Continued.]


CHAPTER XXIV.


The next day, Monroe went with the artist to good Mr. Holworthy,
and proposed to undertake the task of instructing a school. The
preliminaries were speedily arranged: he was to receive a small weekly
stipend, enough, with prudence, to meet his household expenses, and
was to commence at once. Both of the gentlemen accompanied him to the
quarter where his labor was to begin. A large room was hired in a
rickety and forlorn-looking house; the benches for the scholars and a
small desk and chair were the only furniture. And such scholars!--far
different from the delicate, curled darlings of the private schools. The
new teacher found his labor sufficiently discouraging. It was nothing
less than the civilization of a troop of savages. Everything was to be
done; manners, speech, moral instincts, were all equally depraved. They
were to be taught neatness, respect, truth-telling, as well as the usual
branches of knowledge. It was like the task of the pioneer settler in
the wilderness, who must uproot trees, drain swamps, burn briers and
brambles, exterminate hurtful beasts, and prepare the soil for the
reception of the seeds that are to produce the future harvest. We leave
him with his charge, while we attend to other personages of our story.

Mr. Sandford and his sister, upon leaving their house, took lodgings,
and then began to cast about them for the means of support. The money on
which he had relied was gone. His credit was utterly destroyed, and he
had no hope of being reinstated in his former position. The only way
he could possibly be useful in the street was by becoming a curbstone
broker, a go-between, trusted by neither borrower nor lender, and
earning a precarious livelihood by commissions. Even in that position
he felt that he should labor under disadvantages, for he knew that his
course had been universally condemned. It was a matter of every-day
experience for him to meet old acquaintances who looked over him, or
across the street, or in at shop-windows, to avoid recognition. And the
half-patronizing, half-contemptuous nods he did receive were far worse
to bear than downright cuts.

To a man out of employment, proscribed, marked, there is nothing so
terrible as the _impenetrability_ of the close ranks of society around
him. Every busy man seems to have found his place; each locks step with
his neighbor, and the vast procession moves on. Once out of the serried
order, the unhappy wretch can never resume his position. He finds
himself the fifth wheel of a coach; there is nothing for him to do,--no
place for him at the bountiful board where others are fed. He may starve
or drown himself, as he likes; the world has no use for him, and will
not miss him. What Sandford felt, as he walked along the streets, may
well be imagined. If he had not been supported by the indomitable
courage and assurance of his sister, he would have sunk to the level of
a pauper.

One day, as he was passing a church, his eye was caught by a placard at
the door, inviting, in bold letters, "friend, stranger, or traveller
to enter, if but for a few minutes." It was a "business-men's
prayer-meeting." The novelty of the idea struck him; he was at leisure;
he had no notes to pay; anybody might fail, for aught he cared. He went
in, and, to his surprise, saw, among the worshippers, scores of his old
friends, engaged in devotion. Like himself, they had, many of them,
failed, and, after the loss of all temporal wealth, had turned their
attention to the "more durable riches." He fell into a profound
meditation, from which he did not recover until the meeting ended.

The next day he returned, and the day following, also,--taking a seat
each time a little nearer the desk, until at last he reached the front
row of benches, where he was to be seen at every service. It is not
necessary to speculate upon his motives, or to conjecture how far
he deceived himself in his professions,--if, indeed, there was any
deception in the case. Let him have the benefit of whatever doubt there
may be. The leading religious men _hoped_, without feeling any great
confidence; the world, especially the business world, mocked and
derided.

But piety, in itself, however heartfelt, does not clothe or feed its
possessor, and Mr. Sandford, even with that priceless gift, must find
some means of supplying his temporal wants. His new friends had plenty
of advice for him, and some of them would have been glad to furnish
him with employment; but none of them were so well satisfied with the
sincerity of his conversion as to trust him far. It was not to be
wondered, after his exploits on the day of his failure, that there
should be a reasonable shyness on the part of those who had money which
they could not afford or did not choose to give away. It was quite
remarkable to see the change produced when the subject was introduced.
Faces, that a few minutes before had shone with tearful joy or rapturous
aspirations, full of brotherly affection, would suddenly cool, and
contract, and grow severe, when Sandford broached the one topic that was
nearest to him. He found that there was no way of escaping from the
law of compensation by appropriating the results of other men's
labors,--that religion (very much to his disappointment) gave him no
warrant to live in idleness; therefore he was fain to do what he could
for himself. He tried to act as a curb-stone broker, as an insurance
agent, as an adjuster of marine losses and averages, as an itinerant
solicitor for a life-insurance company, as an accountant, and in various
other situations. All in vain. He was shunned like an escaped convict;
the motley suit itself would hardly have added to his disgrace. No one
put faith in him or gave him employment,--save in a few instances, for
charity's sake. Few men can brave a city; and Sandford, certainly, was
not the man to do it. The scowling, or suspicious, or contemptuous,
pitying glances he encountered smote him as with fiery swords. He
quailed; he cowered; he dropped his eyes; he acquired a stooping,
shambling gait. The man who _feels_ that he is looked down upon grows
more diminutive in his own estimation, until he shrinks into the place
which the world assigns him. So Sandford shrunk, until he crept through
the streets where once he had walked erect, and earned a support as
meagre and precarious as the more brazen-faced and ragged of the great
family of mendicants, to which he was gravitating.

Mendicants,--an exceeding great army! They do not all knock at
area-doors for old clothes and broken victual, nor hold out hats at
street-crossings, nor expose sharp-faced babies to win pity, nor send
their infant tatterdemalions to torture the ears of the wealthy with
scratchy fiddles and wheezing accordions. No, these plagues of society
are only the extreme left wing; the right wing is--a very respectable
class in the community. The party-leader who makes his name and
influence serve him in obtaining loans which he never intends to
pay,--shall we call him a beggar? It is an ugly word. The parasite
who makes himself agreeable to dinner-givers, who calculates upon his
accomplishments as a stock in trade, intending that his brains shall
feed his stomach,--what is he, pray? It is ungracious to stigmatize
such a jolly dog. The woman whose fingers are hooped with rings won
in wagers which gallantry or folly could not decline, who is ready by
_philopaena_, or even by more direct suggestions, to lay every beau or
acquaintance under contribution,--is she a beggar, too? It is a long
way, to be sure, from the girl with scanty and draggled petticoat and
tangled hair, picking out lumps of coal from ash-heaps, or carrying home
refuse from the tables of the rich,--a long way from that squalid object
to the richly-cloaked, furred, bonneted, jewelled, flaunting lady, whose
friends are all _so_ kind.

But the most charitable must feel a certain degree of pity, if not of
scorn, for those who, like Mr. and Miss Sandford, contrive to wear the
outward semblance of respectability, boarding with fashionable people
and wearing garments _a la mode_, while they have neither fortune nor
visible occupation. Miss Sandford, to be sure, had a few pupils in
music,--young friends, who, as she averred, "insisted upon practising
with her, although she did not profess to give lessons," not she. Still
her toilet was as elegant as ever. The first appearance of a new style
of cloak, a new pattern of silk or embroidery, new ribbons, laces,
jewelry, might be observed, as she took her morning promenade. The
dealers in rich goods, elegant trifles, costly nothings, all knew her
well. Whatever satisfied her artistic taste she purchased. To see was to
desire, and, in some way, all she coveted tended by a magical attraction
to her rooms. "Society" frowned upon her; she went to no receptions in
the higher circles, but she had no lack of associates for all that.
At concerts and other public assemblages, her brilliant figure and
irreproachable costume were always to be seen,--the admiration of men,
the envy of women. Nor was she without gallants. Gentlemen flocked about
her, and seemed only too happy in her smiles; but it never happened that
their wives or sisters joined in their attentions. On fine days, as she
came out for a walk, she was sure to be accompanied by some person whose
dress and manners marked him as belonging to the wealthy classes; and
at such times it generally happened,--according to the scandal-loving
shopkeepers,--that the last new book, the little "love" of a ring, or
the engraved scent-bottle was purchased.

An odd affair is Society. At its outposts are flaming swords for women,
though invisible to other eyes; men can venture without the lines, if
they only return at roll-call. Let a woman receive or visit one of the
_demi-monde_, (the technical use of the word is happily inapplicable
here,) and she might as well earn her living by her own labor, or do
any other disreputable thing; but her brother may pay court to the most
doubtful, and mothers will only shake their heads and say, "He _must_
sow his wild oats; he'll get over all that by-and-by."

So the beauty was still queen in her circle, and found admirers in
plenty. Perhaps she even enjoyed the freedom; for, to a woman of spirit,
the constraints of _taboo_ must be irksome at times. Not the Brahmin,
who fears to tread upon sole-leather from the sacred cow, and dares
not even think of the flavor of her forbidden beef, who keeps himself
haughtily aloof from the soldier and the trader, and walks sunward from
the pariah, lest the polluting shadow fall on his holy person, has a
more difficult and engrossing occupation than the woman of fashion, in
a country where the distinctions of rank are so purely factitious as in
ours. Miss Sandford's time was now her own; she was accountable to no
supervisor. Her brother was a cipher. He did not venture to intrude upon
her, except at seasons when she was at leisure, and in a humor to be
bored by him. Perhaps she looked back regretfully, but, as far as could
be told by her manner, she carried herself proudly, with the air of one
who says,--

"Better reign in hell than serve in heaven."

The observant reader has doubtless wondered before this, that Mr.
Sandford did not, in his emergency, apply to his old clerk, Fletcher,
for the money in exchange for the peculiar obligation of which mention
has been made. It is presuming too much upon Mr. Sandford's stupidity
to suppose that the idea had not frequently occurred to him. But he was
satisfied that Fletcher was one of the few who were making money in this
time of general distress, and that with every day's acquisition the
paper became more valuable; therefore, as it was his last trump, he
preferred to play it when it would sweep the board; and he was willing
to live in any way until the proper time came. Not so easy was Fletcher.
Several times he attempted to pay the claim, so that he could once more
hold his head erect as a free man. But Sandford smiled blandly; "he was
in no hurry," he said; "Mr. Fletcher evidently had money, and was good
for the amount." Poor Fletcher!--walking about with a rope around his
neck,--a long rope now, and slack,--but held by a man who knows not what
pity means!


CHAPTER XXV.


Greenleaf pursued his search for Alice with all the ardor of his nature.
One glimpse only he had of her;--at a clothing-store, where he inquired,
the clerk seemed to recognize the description given, and was quite
sure that such a girl had taken out work, but he knew nothing of
her whereabouts, and he believed she was now employed by another
establishment. It was something to know that she was in the city, and,
probably, not destitute; still better to know what path of life she had
chosen, so that his time need not be wasted in fruitless inquiries.
On his return, after the second day's search, he sought his friend
Easelmann, whose counsel and sympathy he particularly desired.

"Any tidings of the fugitive?" was the first question.

"No," replied Greenleaf,--"nothing satisfactory. I have heard of her
once; but it was like a trail in the woods, which the hunter comes upon,
then loses utterly."

"But the hunter who measures a track once will be likely to find it
again."

"Yes, I have that consolation. But, Easelmann, though this mishap of
losing Alice has cost me many sleepless nights, and will continue to
engross my time until I find her, I cannot rid myself of other troubles
and apprehensions. I have done nothing for a long time. I have no
orders; and, as I have no fortune to fall back upon, I see nothing but
starvation before me."

"Then, my dear fellow, look the other way. It isn't wise to distress
yourself by looking ahead, so long as you have the chance of turning
round."

"I feel lonely, too,--isolated. People that I meet are civil enough;
but I don't know a man, except in my profession, that I can consider a
friend."

"Very likely. Caste isn't confined to India."

"I had supposed that intellect and culture were enough to secure for
a man a recognition in good society; but I am made to feel, a hundred
times a day, that I have no more _status_ than a clever colored man, an
itinerant actor, or any other anomaly. To-day I met Travis; you know he
comes here and makes himself free and easy with us, and has always put
himself on a footing of equality."

"Wherein you made a mistake. He has no right, but by courtesy, to
any equality. A little taste, perhaps, and money enough to gratify
it,--that's all. He never had an idea in his life."

"That is the reason I felt the slight. He was walking with a lady whose
manner and dress were unmistakable,--a lady of undoubted position. I
bowed, and received in return one of those hardly-perceptible nods, with
a forced smile that covered only the side of his face _from_ the lady.
It was a recognition that one might throw to his boot-black. I am a
mild-mannered man, as you know; but I could have murdered him on the
spot."

Greenleaf walked the floor with flashing eyes and his teeth set.

"Now, I like the spirit," said Easelmann; "but, pray, be sensible.
'Where Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table.' Stand firm in
your own shoes, and graduate your bows by those you get."

"I suppose I am thin-skinned."

"As long as you are, you will chafe. Cultivate a hide like a
rhinoceros's, and Society will let fly its pin-pointed arrows in vain.
You have a great deal to learn, my dear boy."

"But other special classes are not so treated,--literary men, for
instance."

"Don't be too sure of that. An author who has attained position is
_feted_, because the fashionable circles must have their lions. But to
stand permanently like other men, he must have money or family, or else
obey the world's ten commandments, of which the first is, 'Thou shalt
not wear a slouched hat,'--and the rest are like unto it. No,--the
literary men have their heart-burnings, I suspect. They forget, as you
do, that their very profession, the direction of their thoughts, their
mode of life, cut them off from sympathy and fellowship. What has a
writer who dreams of rivalling Emerson or the 'Autocrat' to do with
costly and absorbing private theatricals, with dances at Papanti's, with
any of the thousand modes of killing time agreeably? And how shall you
become the new Claude, if you give your thoughts to the style of your
clothes, and to the inanities that make up the staple of conversation?"

"But because I am precluded from devoting my time to society, that is no
reason why I should bear the patronizing airs"----

"Don't be patronized,--that's all. If a man gives you such a look as
you have described, cut him dead the next time you meet him. If anybody
gives you two fingers to shake, give him only one of yours. I tried that
plan on a doctor of divinity once, and it worked admirably. His intended
condescension somehow vanished in a mist, and the foolish confusion that
overspread his blank features would have done you good to behold."

"I have no doubt. I don't think it would be easy to be impertinent to
you. Not that there are not presuming people enough; but you have a
way with you. Your blade that cuts off a bayonet at a blow will glide
through a feather as well."

"A delicate stroke of yours! Now to return. You are out of money, you
say. Perhaps you will allow me to become your creditor for a while. I
may presume upon the relation and take on some airs;--that's inevitable;
one can't forego such a privilege;--but I promise to bow very civilly
whenever I meet you; and I won't remind you of the debt--above twice a
day."

Taking out his pocket-book, he handed his friend fifty dollars, and
_pshawed_ and _poohed_ at every expression of gratitude.

"By the way, Greenleaf," he continued, "I have been in search of an
absconding female also. You remember Mrs. Sandford, the charming widow?"

"Yes,--what has become of her?"

"You see how philosophical I am. I have not seen her yet; and yet I am
not crazy about it. Some chickens think the sky is falling, whenever a
rose-leaf drops on their heads."

"But you have no such reason to be anxious."

"Haven't I? Do you think old fellows like me have lost recollection as
well as feeling? One of the most deadly cases of romance I ever knew was
between people of forty and upwards."

"How dull I was! I saw some rather odd glances between you at the
musical party, but thought nothing more about it. But why haven't you
been looking for her?"

"I have been cogitating," said Easelmann, twisting his moustaches.

"I should think so. If you had asked me, now! I went with her to the
house where I suppose she is still boarding."

"Did you?" [_very indifferently, and with the falling inflection._]

"Why, don't you want to know?"

"Yes,--to-morrow. And I think, that, when we find her, we may find a
clue to your Alice."

Greenleaf started up as if he had been galvanized.

"You _have_ seen her, then! You old fox! Where is she? To-morrow,
indeed! Tell me, and I will fly."

"You can't; for, as Brother Chadband observed, you haven't any wings."

"Don't trifle with me. I know your fondness for surprises; but if you
love me, don't put me off with your nonsense."

Greenleaf was thoroughly in earnest, and Easelmann took a more
soothing tone. At another time the temptation to tease would have been
irresistible.

"Be calm, you man of gunpowder, steel, whalebone, and gutta-percha! I
positively have nothing but guesses to give you. Besides, do you think
you have nothing to do but rush into Alice's arms when you find her?
Take some valerian to quiet your nerves, and go to bed. In the morning,
try to smooth over those sharp features of yours. Use rouge, if you
can't get up your natural color. When you are presentable, come over
here again, and we'll stroll out in search of adventure. But mind, I
promise nothing,--I only guess."

While he spoke, Greenleaf looked into the mirror, and was surprised to
see how anxiety had worn upon him. His face was thin and bloodless, and
his eyes sunken, but glowing. The quiet influence of his friend calmed
him, and his impatience subsided. He took his leave silently, wringing
Easelmann's hand, and walked home with a lighter heart.

"He is a good fellow," mused Easelmann, "and has suffered enough for his
folly. The lesson will do him good."


CHAPTER XXVI.


Mr. Bullion was not without good natural impulses, but his education and
experience had been such as to develop only the sharp and selfish traits
of his character. An orphan at the age of eleven years, he was placed


 


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