Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/346

Rh of their former temple is seen standing on its elevated site. One of my friends, who some years ago was travelling on the Mississippi, went on shore at Nauvoo a few days after the Mormon prophet, Joe Smith, was killed by the people of Illinois. He saw the people of the town and the district, a population of about twenty thousand, come forth from their dwellings to the singing of psalms; saw them advance westward into the wilderness to seek there for that promised land which their prophet had foretold to them. After a wandering of three thousand miles through wildernesses, amid manifold dangers and difficulties, and the endurance of much suffering, they arrived at the Great Salt Lake, and its fertile shores. There, they have within a few years, so greatly increased and multiplied, that they are now in a fair way to become a powerful State. Faith can, even in these days, remove mountains—nay more, can remove great cities. Nauvoo is now purchased by the French communist, Cabet, who will there establish a society of “Egalitairé.”

Yes, in this great West, on the shores of the Great River, exist very various scenes and peoples. There are Indians; there are squatters; there are Scandinavians, with gentle manners and cheerful songs; there are Mormons, Christian in manners, but fanatics in their faith in one man (and Eric Jansenists are in this respect similar to the Mormons); there are desperate adventurers, with neither faith nor law, excepting in Mammon and club-law; gamblers, murderers, and thieves, who are without conscience, and their number and their exploits increase along the banks of the Mississippi the farther we advance south. There are giants, who are neither good nor evil; but who perform great deeds through the force of their will, and their great physical powers, and their passion for enterprise. There are worshippers of freedom and communists; there are slave-owners and slaves.