A Terrible Defile

The first afternoon-stage that day was a long and terrible one. The poor horses could hardly drag our crazy wagon, up to its hubs in potash; and yet we knew our only safety, in case of attack, was a running fight. We must fire from our windows as the horses flew. About four o'clock we entered a terrible defile, which seemed planned by Nature for treachery and ambush. The great, black, porphory and trachyte rose three hundred feet above our heads, their lower and nearer ledges being all so many natural parapets to fire over, loop-holed with chinks to fire through. There were ten rifles in our party. We ran them out, five on a side, ready to send the first red villain who peeped over the breastworks to quick perdition. Our six-shooters lay across our laps, our bowie-knives were at our sides, our cartouche-boxes, crammed with ready vengeance, swung open on our breast-straps. We sat with tight-shut teeth, -- only muttering now and then to each other, in a glum undertone, "Don't get nervous, --don't throw a single shot away, -- take aim, -- remember it's for home!"

The Lookout

I must abruptly leap to the overland stage again. From Salt Lake City to Washoe and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the road lies through the most horrible desert conceivable by the mind of man. For the sand of the Sahara we find substituted an impalpable powder of alkali, white as the driven snow, stretching for ninety miles at a time in one uninterrupted dazzling sheet, which supports not even that last obstinate vidette of vegetation, the wild-sage brush.

As if Nature had not done her worst, we were doomed, on the second day out from Salt Lake, to hear, at one station where we stopped, horrid rumors of Goshoots on the war-path, and, ere the day reached its noon, to find their proofs irrefragable. Every now and then we saw in the potash-dust moccasin-tracks, with the toes turned in, and presently my field-glass revealed a hideous devil skulking in the mile-off ledges, who was none other than a Goshoot spy. How far off were the scalpers and burners?

The Destroying Angel

Porter Rockwell is a man whom my readers must have heard of in every account of fearlessly executed massacre committed in Utah during the last thirteen years. He is the chief of the Danites, -- a band of saints who possess the monopoly of vengeance upon Gentiles and Mormons. They are the Heaven-elected assassins of Mormonism . . . Porter Rockwell has slain forty men. This is historical. His probable private victims amount to as many more. He wears his hair braided behind, and done up in a knot with a back-comb, like a woman's. he has a face full of bull-dog courage, -- but vastly good-natured, and without a bad trait in it. I went out riding with him on the Fourth of July, and enjoyed his society greatly, - though I knew that at a word from Brigham he would cut my throat in as matter-of-fact a style as if I had been a calf instead of an author. I understood his anomaly perfectly, and found him one of the pleasantest murderers I have ever met. He was mere executive force, from which the lever, conscience, had suffered entire disjunction, being in the hand of Brigham.

Supreme Control

Over all these matters Brigham Young has supreme control. His power is the most despotic known to mankind. Here, by the way, is the constitutionally vulnerable point of Mormonism. If fear of establishing a bad precedent hinder the United States at any time from breaking that nest of all disloyalty, because of its licentious marriage-institutions, Utah is still open to grave punishment, and the Administration inflicting it would have duty as well as vested right upon its side, on the ground that it stands pledged to secure to each of the nation's constituent sections a republican form of government, -- something which Utah has never enjoyed any more than Timbuctoo. I once asked Brigham if Dr. Bernhisel would be likely to get to Congress again. "No," he replied with perfect certainty; "we shall send __________ as our Delegate." What more absolute despotism is conceivable? Here lies the pou-sto for the lever of Governmental interference. The mere fact of such power resting in one man's irresponsible hands is a crime against the Constitution. At the same time, this power, wonderful as it may seem, is practically wielded for the common good. I never heard Brigham's worst enemies accuse him of peculation . . . His life is one great theoretical mistake, yet he makes fewer practical mistakes than any other man, so situated, whom the world ever saw.

Infernally Cruel Ruse

As to the Indians, let me remark by-the-by, I did not tell him (Brigham Young) that I understood the reason of his dislike to severe measures in that direction. Infernally bestial and cruel as are the Goshoots, PiUtes, and other Desert tribes, still they have never planned an extensive raid since the Mormons entered Utah. In every settlement of saints you will find from two to a dozen young men who wear their black hair in the Indian fashion, and speak all the surrounding dialects with native fluency. Whenenver a fatly-provided wagon-train is to be attacked, a fine herd of emigrants' beeves stampeded, the mail to be stopped, or the Gentiles in any way harassed, these desperadoes stain their skin, exchange their clothes for a breech-clout, and rally a horde of the savages, whose favor they have always propitiated, for the ambush and massacre, which in all but the element of brute force is their work in plan, leadership and execution.

Living Peacably

"You will find us," said he, "trying to live peaceably. A sojourn with people thus minded must be a great relief to you, who come from a land where brother hath lifted hand against brother, and you hear the confused noise of the warrior perpetually ringing in your ears." Despite the courtly deference and Scriptural dignity of this speech, I detected in it a latent crow over that "perished Union" which was the favorite theme of every saint I met in Utah, and I hastened to assure the President that I had no desire for relief from sympathy with my country's struggle for honor and existence.

"Ah," he replied, in a voice slightly tinged with sarcasm. "You differ greatly, then, from multitudes of your own countrymen, who, since the draft began, have passed through Salt Lake, flying westward from the crime of their brothers' blood. . . You call them 'Copperheads' I believe? We find them very truth-seeking, remarkably open to conviction. Many of them have stayed with us. . ." This made me long to knock him down worse than I had ever felt regarding either saint or sinner. But it is costly to smite an apostle of the Lord in Salt Lake City; I merely retaliated by telling him I wished I could hear him say that in a lecture-room full of Sanitary-Commission ladies scraping lint for their husbands, sweethearts, and brothers in the Union army.

Open Sesame

Before we enter the City of the Saints, let me briefly describe the greatest, not merely of the architectural curiosities, but, in my opinion, the greatest natural curiosity of any kind which I have ever seen or heard of. Mind, too, that I remember Niagara, the Cedar-Creek Bridge, and the Mammoth Cave, when I speak thus of the Church Buttes. They are situated a short distance from Fort Bridger; the overland road passes by their side. They consist of a sandstone bluff, reddish-brown in color, rising with the abruptness of a pile of masonry from the perfectly level plain, carved along its perpendicular face into a series of partially connected religious edifices. . . In each of the confex faces is an admirably proportioned doorway, a Gothic arch with deep-carved and elaborately fretted mouldings, so wonderfully perfect in its imitation that you almost feel like knocking for admittance, did you only know the "Open Sesame." Between and behind the doors, alternating with flying buttresses, are a series of deep-niched windows. . .

Fort Bridger

Between Green River and the Mormon city no human interest divides your perpetually strained attention from Nature. Fort Bridger, a little over a day's stage-ride east of the city, is a large and quite populous trading-post and garrison of the United States; but although we found there a number of agreeable officers, whose acquaintance with their wonderful surroundings was thorough and scientific, and though at that period the fort was a rendezvous for our only faithful friend among the Utah Indians, Washki, the Snake chief, and that handful of his tribe who still remain loyal to their really noble leader and our Government, Fort Bridger left the shadowiest of impressions on my mind, compared with the natural glories of the surrounding scenery.