Part 14 (1/2)
Looking over this scene, the girl murmurs, ”How peaceful--how beautiful!” and next, ”How wonderful,” and a moment after, gazing at the great Mormon Tabernacle, she mutters, ”How awful!” for in the two hours pa.s.sed upon the train coming from Ogden to Salt Lake, Harry Lawrence has told her, as delicately as a young man can tell a maiden, of this peculiar city into which she has just come, and she knows quite well the peculiar creed of the Church of Latter-Day Saints.
She has learnt how this sect, founded upon the so-called revelation from the Almighty, made to Joseph Smith, and Hyrum, his brother, in about 1847, driven out from Illinois and afterwards from Missouri, had left civilization behind them, and pa.s.sing over a thousand of miles of prairie and mountain, inhabited only by savage Indians and trappers and hunters, had come by ox-teams, on horseback, by hand carts and on foot, enduring for long months all the privations and dangers of the wilderness, to this far-off valley to build a Mormon empire. For that is surely what their leaders had hoped.
The civilization of the East seemed to them so far off a hundred years might not bring it to them, across those boundless rolling prairies and that five hundred miles of mountain country. To the West were more deserts, and beyond a land scarcely known at that time, and inhabited only by Indians, save where some Mexican mission stood surrounded by its little orchard and vineyard, in that land that is now called California.
In this hope of empire, the Mormon leaders had built up polygamy, which, having been begun for l.u.s.t, they now preached, continued, and fostered to produce the power that numbers give. For this reason the order had been given, ”Increase and multiply, that you may cover the land,” and it was cried out from pulpit and tabernacle ”that Utah's best crop was children;” and missionaries and Mormon propagandists were sent out over both Europe and America to make converts to the new religion. So, many Scandinavians, Welsh and English, were taken into the faith and came to live in the Utah valleys, and thought this religion of Joseph Smith a very good one--for they were chiefly the sc.u.m of Europe--and now had land to cultivate and plenty with which to fill their stomachs, while in their native lands they had often hungered.
For the Mormon hierarchy hoped, in the distant future, when the civilization from the Eastern States had reached them, to be increased by immigration and multiplication from thousands into millions; and peopling the whole land, from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, to be strong enough to dominate Mexico if she dared complain of their occupation of North California, and even to give battle to these United States of America.
And to the eyes of Brigham and his satellites came the dream of a Mormon empire, holding dominion over the Pacific, ruled over by the Priesthood of the faith of Joseph Smith and the Council of Seventies, and above them the President and Vice-President, descendants of Brigham Young and Heber Kimball and others high in rank and power in the theocracy of the so-called Latter-Day Saints.
All of these plans might have borne fruit and have been realized had it not been that one day in 1848 gold was discovered near Sutter's Fort in California, and the rush of adventurers to the western El Dorado peopled its fertile valleys and mineral-bearing mountains and great grain-raising plains with a population who wors.h.i.+pped Jehovah and not Joe Smith. Then the Mexican war having given Arizona and Texas and the Pacific States to the United States, Brigham Young and his emigrants found themselves surrounded and cut off in and about the valley of Salt Lake. But still they continued to increase and multiply and make the desert about them fertile and populated, still hoping to be strong enough to resist foreign domination, for they regarded the United States as such, and treated its laws, if not as null and void, at least as secondary to the commands of their prophet and priesthood, until one day in 1862 Pat Conner and his California Volunteers marched in from the Humboldt, and crossing the Jordan, despite the threats of the Mormon leaders, set up the United States flag at Camp Douglas.
Then Mormon hopes, from that of independent empire, fell to the wish to be simply left alone, to do as they pleased in their own country, as they termed it, and to follow out the revelations of their prophets, taking unto themselves as many wives as they chose, unhindered by the United States laws.
But in 1869, when the Central and Union Pacific Railways were opened, bringing in a horde of Gentiles from all the corners of the world to delve in their mountains for gold, silver and lead, then the struggle of the Mormon theocracy became one not for power, but even for existence.
It is just in this state as Erma gazes at its metropolis.
This last great fight of the Mormon Church is being made without the sacrifice and the cutting off from the face of the earth of their enemies, for though the prophets of Zion would preach ”blood atonement”
to their followers with as much gusto in 1871 as they did twenty years before, when they cut off the Morrisites, root and branch, or in 1857, when, headed by John D. Lee, they ma.s.sacred one hundred and thirty-three emigrants, men, women and children, or in 1866, when they a.s.sa.s.sinated Dr. Robinson, luring him from his own door on a professional errand of mercy to a wounded man, as well as many other murders, ”cuttings off behind the ears” and ”usings up,” done in the name of the Lord and in pursuit of mammon, l.u.s.t and power, at such various times and places as seemed good, safe and convenient to the Apostles; still, even before 1871 the rush of Gentile immigration and the United States troops at Camp Douglas had taught them caution in their slaughterings.
Most of this has been explained to Miss Travenion by her escort and mentor of the morning, but he has not descanted very minutely upon Celestial Marriage, which permits a man to take wives not only for this world, but also to have any number of others sealed to him for eternity; the doctrine that woman takes her rank in Heaven according to the station and glory of her husband. That under these theories, men have often taken two sisters to wife, and sometimes even mother and daughter.
That a great part of the theory, as also the practice, of the Saints of Latter Days, is founded upon the social degradation of woman. All these things she does not know, though she will perchance some day learn more fully concerning them.
But the day is too sunny and bright for meditation, and the soft breeze from the Wahsatch incites Erma to action. Just then there is a light feminine knock on her door, and Louise's voice cries merrily: ”Hurry, Erma; mamma is down-stairs at breakfast and wants to see you. She has so many questions to ask. Ferdie has just told her about his being saved from death by Captain Lawrence, and is singing his praises.”
Being perhaps anxious to sing the young Western man's praises herself, Miss Travenion, with a happy laugh, trips out and kisses Louise, and the two girls run down to the dining-room, where they find Mrs. Livingston still pale and palpitating over Ferdie's escape, though apparently with a very good appet.i.te, notwithstanding Mr. Chauncey has made his narrative very highly colored, stating that he had knocked the desperado down and would have done him up if it had not been for his bowie-knife.
”All the same,” he adds, just as Erma seats herself at the table, ”that Lawrence is a regular thoroughbred--a Western hero, and saved my life in that barroom.”
”I should think you would be ashamed of yourself,” says Mr. Livingston, airily, during pauses in his breakfast, ”to admit a.s.sociating with barroom loafers!”
”Barroom loafers?” cries Erma. ”Whom do you mean?” and she looks at Ollie in so resolute and defiant a manner that he hesitates to take up the cudgels with her.
Therefore he mutters rather sulkily, ”Oh, if you are going to make this Lawrence your hero I have nothing more to say,” and glumly pitches into the beefsteak that is in front of him; but, all the same, hates Harry a little more than he has ever done.
Anxious to put an end to a discussion which does her son no good in the eyes of the young lady she regards as his _fiancee_, Mrs. Livingston proposes a sight-seeing drive about the city.
”You will come with us, Erma?” she adds.
”With pleasure,” answers the girl. ”Perhaps on the main street I may see papa.”
”By Jove,” laughs Ferdie. ”You're always thinking of papa now. But you forgot him a _little_--last night at Ogden, eh?”
To this insinuation Erma answers nothing, but rises from the table with a heightened color on her cheeks.
Noticing this, Mrs. Livingston thinks it just as well that her _protegee_ sees no more of the Western mining man, and is rather relieved when Mr. Chauncey informs her Captain Lawrence has departed for Tintic, and will not return for several days.
Then they take a long drive about the city, the hackman condescendingly acting as _cicerone_ to the party, and pointing out the Tabernacle and the proposed Temple, the foundations of which have just been laid, and the Endowment House and the t.i.thing Office, and the Beehive and Lion House, in which Brigham Young, the president of the Latter-Day Saints, keeps the major portion of his harem; though he has houses and wives almost all over the Territory.