Page:The City of the Saints.djvu/306

288 Gentile population, which was an incalculable boon to the Mormons. They thus rid themselves of the "thriving lawyers, gamblers, prostitutes, criminals, and desperadoes, loafers, and drunkards," who made New Jerusalem a carnival of horrors. The scene is now shifted to Denver and Carson cities, where rape and robbery, intoxication and shooting are attributed to their true causes, the gathering together of a lawless and excited crowd, not to the "baleful shade of that deadly Upas-tree, Mormonism."

The Mormons, having lost all hopes of safety by isolation, now seek it in the reverse: mail communication with the Eastern and Western States is their present hobby: they look forward to markets for their produce, and to a greater facility and economy of importing. They have dreamed of a water-line to the East by means of the Missouri head-waters, which are said to be navigable for 350—400 miles, and to the West by the tributaries of the Snake River, that afford 400. Shortly after the foundation of Great Salt Lake City, they proceeded to establish, under the ecclesiastical title "Stakes of Zion in the Wilderness," settlements and outposts, echelonned in skeleton, afterward to be filled in, from Temple Block along the southern line to San Diego. The importance of connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific by a shorter route than the 24,000 miles of navigation round Cape Horn, has produced first a monthly, then a weekly, and lastly a daily mail, and has opened up a route from the Holy City to Carson Valley. So far from opposing the Pacific Railroad, the local Legislature petitioned for it in 1849, and believe that it would increase the value of their property tenfold. But as equal parts of Mormon and Gentile never could dwell together in amity, extensive communication would probably result in causing the Saints to sell out, and once more to betake themselves to their "wilderness work" in Sonora, or in other half-settled portions of Northern Mexico. This view of the question is taken by the federal authorities, who would willingly, if they could, confer upon the petitioners the fatal boon.

The Mormon pioneers, 143 in number, when sent westward under several of the apostles to seek for settlements, fixed upon the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. The advance colony of 4000 souls, expelled from Nauvoo on the Mississippi, and headed by "Brigham the Seer," arrived there on the 24th of July, 1847, the anniversary of which is their 4th of July—Independence Day. Before the end of the first week a tract of land was ditched, plowed, and planted with potatoes. City-Creek Kanyon was dammed for irrigation; an area of forty acres was fortified after the old New England fashion by facing log houses inward, and by a palisade of timber hauled from the ravines; the city was laid out upon the spot where they first rested, the most eligible site in the Valley, and prayers, with solemn ceremonies, consecrated the land.