all Germans and Irishmen. The percentage in the navy is greater, yet it is still inconsiderable. The Mexican War, as History writes it, is the triumph of the militia, whom old "Rough and Ready" led to conquest as to a "manifest destiny." On the other hand, the old and distinguished officer who succeeded General Taylor has occasionally, it is said, given utterance to opinions concerning the irregulars which contrast strongly with those generally attributed to him. At Camp Floyd I found feeling running high against the Mormons. "They hate us, and we hate them," said an intelligent officer; consequently, every statement here, as in the city, must be received with many grains of salt. At Camp Floyd one hears the worst version of every fact, which, as usual hereabouts, has its many distinct facets. These anti-Mormons declare that ten murders per annum during the last twelve years have been committed without punishment in New Zion, whereas New York averages 18:33. They attribute the phenomenon to the impossibility of obtaining testimony, and the undue whitewashing action of juries, which the Mormons declare to be "punctual and hard-working in sustaining the dignity of the law," and praise for their "unparalleled habits of industry and sobriety, order, and respect to just rights." Whatever objection I made was always answered by the deception of appearances, and the assertion that whenever a stranger enters Great Salt Lake City, one or two plausible Mormons are told off to amuse and hoodwink him. Similarly the Mormons charge the Christians with violent injustice. On a late occasion, the mayor of Springville, Mr. H. F. Macdonald, and the bishop were seized simply because they were Church dignitaries, on the occasion of a murder, and the former, after durance vile of months at Camp Floyd, made his escape and walks about a free man, swearing that he will not again be taken alive. In 1853, Captain J. W. Gunnison and seven of his party were murdered near Nicollet on Sevier River, twenty-five miles south of Nephi City. The anti-Mormons declare that the deed was done under high counsel, by "white Indians," to prevent the exploration of a route to California, and the disclosures which were likely to be made. The Mormons point to their kind treatment of the previous expedition upon which the lamented officer was engaged, to the friendliness of his book, to the circumstance that an Indian war was then raging, and that during the attack an equal number of Yuta Indians. were killed. M. Remy distinctly refers the murder to the Pahvant Indians, some of whom had been recently shot by emigrants to California. The horrible "Mountain Meadow Massacre" was, *And it will be remembered, the Mexicans were not Austrians or Russians. + See Translation, vol. i., p. 463. The following is the account of that affair, officially given, of course, by antiMormons: On the 4th or 5th of September, 1857, a large emigrant train from Arkansas, proceeding to California with horses, mules, and ox-wagons, conveying stores of clothing and valuables, was suddenly attacked near a spring at the west end of according to the anti-Mormons, committed by the Saints to revenge the death of an esteemed apostle-Parley P. Pratt—who, in the spring of 1857, when traveling through Arkansas, was knived by one Hector M'Lean, whose wife he had converted and taken unto himself. The Mormons deny that the massacre was committed by their number, and ask the Gentiles why, if such be the case, the murderers are not brought to justice? They look upon Mr. P. P. Pratt's proceeding-even in El Islam, the women of the infidels are, like their property, halal, or lawful to those who win them-as perfectly justifiable.* In February, 1859, occurred Mountain Meadow Valley. The Indians, directed by white men, cut off from water the travelers, who had fortified themselves behind the vehicles, which they filled with earth, and killed and wounded several. When the attacked party, distressed by thirst and a galling fire, showed symptoms of surrender, several Mormons, among whom the leaders, John D. Lee and Elder Isaac C. Haight, are particularly mentioned, approached them with a white flag, and by soft words persuaded them that if they would give up their weapons they should be safely forwarded to Panther Creek and Cedar City. The emigrants unwisely disarmed themselves, and flocked toward the spring. The work of murder and robbery began near a patch of scrub-oak brush, about one mile and a half from water. Between 115 and 120 adults were slain. Three emerged from the valley; of these, two were soon overtaken and killed, and the third was slaughtered at Muddy Creek, distant about fifty miles. One of the Mormons the name has been variously given-is accused of a truly detestable deed; a girl, sixteen years old, knelt to him, imploring mercy; he led her away into the thicket-and then at her throat. Seventeen children, aged from two months to seven years, were taken from the Indians by the whites, and were distributed among the several Mormon families in Cedar City, Fort Harmony, Santa Clara, etc. Of these, sixteen were recovered, and the seventeenth was found in the April of 1858. Mr. Jacob Forney, the late Superintendent of Indian Affairs, conducted the investigation on the part of the federal government; he reported that white men joined in the murder and the robbery. The Mormons of course deny, in toto, complicity with the Indians, and remark that many trains-for instance, to quote no others, the emigrants at Sublette's Cut-off, Oregon, in August, 1858-have similarly suffered, and that they can not be responsible for the misfortunes which men who insult and illtreat the natives bring upon themselves. *The following is an extract from the "Millennial Star," July 25th, 1857. The article is headed "More of the Assassination:" "We publish the following extract from a letter written by two gentlemen to the editor of a New York paper. The letter was dated Flint-Cherokee Nation, Arkansas, May 17th, 1857, and says that after Elder Pratt was arrested in the Indian country, he was 'placed under a strong guard, and by a military escort conveyed in chains to the Supreme Court, Van Buren, Arkansas. The case being promptly investigated, and there being no evidence upon which a bill of indictment could be found, he was liberated on the 13th instant. Brother Pratt, being without arms, and without friends to protect him, and knowing that M'Lean was thirsting for his blood, and that he had the aid of a mass of the corrupt, money-bought citizens of Van Buren, endeavored to make his escape on horseback, unmolested; but every road and passway being under strict watch, he did not succeed in getting far till his path was discovered. M'Lean and half a dozen other armed fiends pursued him; and Brother Pratt being totally unarmed, they succeeded in killing him without being hurt. Two of the party in advance intercepted his road, and brought him to a halt, while M'Lean and the others came up in the rear. M'Lean discharged a six-shooter at him, but the balls took no effect: some passed through his clothes, others lodged in his saddle. The parties now being in immediate contact, M'Lean stabbed him (both being on horseback) with a heavy bowie-knife twice under the left arm. Brother Pratt dropped from his horse, and M'Lean dismounted, and probed the fatal wounds still deeper; he then got a Derringer from one of his aids, and, as Brother Pratt lay dying upon his back, shot him in the upper part of the breast, dropping the pistol by the side of the victim. The assassin then mounted his horse and fled. This occurred within a few steps of the sundry disturbances between the soldiers and citizens at Rush Valley, thirty-five miles west of Great Salt Lake City, in which Mr. Howard Spencer, nephew to Mr. Daniel Spencer, a squatter, while being removed from a government reservation by First Sergeant Ralph Pike of the 10th Infantry, raised a pitchfork, and received in return a broken head. Shortly afterward the sergeant, having been summoned to Great Salt Lake City, was met in Main Street and shot down before all present. The anti-Mormons, of course, declare the deed to have been done by Mr. Spencer, and hold it, under the circumstances-execution of duty and summons of justice-an unpardonable outrage; and the officers assert that they could hardly prevent their men arming and personally revenging the foul murder of a comrade, who was loved as an excellent soldier and an honest man.* The Mormons assert that the "shooting" was done by an unknown hand; that the sergeant had used unnecessary violence against a youth, who, single-handed and surrounded by soldiers, had raised a pitchfork to defend his head, and that the provocation thus received converted the case from murder to one of justifiable homicide. In the month of June before my arrival, a Lieutenant Saunders and Assistant Surgeon Covey had tied to a cart's tail and severely flogged Mr. Hennefer, a Mormon. The opposition party assert that they recognized in him the man who two years before had acted as a spy upon them when sitting in Messrs. Livingston's store, and, when ordered to "make tracks," had returned with half a dozen others, and had shot Dr. Covey in the breast. The Mormons represent Mr. Hen residence of a farmer by the name of Wire. Two gentlemen, being at the house at the time, saw the whole affair, and have made oath to what they witnessed before a coroner's jury. Brother Pratt survived the work of this assassin two hours and a half, and was enabled to tell those who came to his assistance who he was, that he had been murdered by a fiend for doing his duty, and gave full instructions as to what course should be pursued in interring his body, and the disposition of the means and property connected with his person. His instructions were fully attended to by Elder Higginson and Mrs. M'Lean, who reached the place of his assassination the same evening. Those who saw his last moments state that Brother Pratt died without a murmur or a groan, and apparently without a pain, perfectly resigned to the will of Heaven. Brother Pratt told Elder Higginson, the morning after his arrest, that his enemies would kill him, and requested Elder Higginson to go through with this spring's emigration to Utah, and carry the news of his death to the Church and his family. This Elder Higginson will do, the Lord helping. After perpetrating this heaven-daring deed, M'Lean returned to Van Buren and made it known. After remaining in town several hours, and walking the streets with impunity, he was escorted by a number of citizens of Van Buren to the boat, and took his leave of the place. Verily we had long thought that the bloodthirsty mobocrats of Missouri and Illinois were without a parallel in the world, but we now yield the palm to the Church-going citizens of Van Buren, for they have proven to the world that they are a den of murderers and assassins. GEORGE HIGGINSON. *On this occasion, Cedar Fort, a neighboring settlement, with cultivation, and a few huts, near Camp Floyd, was attacked at night by camp-followers (soldiers); a single calf was killed (the whole place was burned to the ground), and the damages speedily rose from a dozen to $10,000, claimed from Congress (which did not half repay the injury done). nefer to be a peaceful citizen, and quiet, unoffending man, thus brutally outraged by tyrannical servants of government, and, moreover, prove for him an alibi from the original cause of quarrel. I have given but a few instances: all are equally contradictory, and tantas componere lites quis audet? men. Strongly disclaiming the idea that the officers who discussed with me the subject at Camp Floyd had any tendency to exaggeration or to set down aught in malice, and quite conscious, as they never failed to remark, that a stranger is allowed to see only the beau côté of the New Faith, I can not but think that their views are greatly warped by causes external to it. This is to be expected. Who, after the massacre of Cawnpore, would have admitted into his mind a shadow of excuse for Nana Sahib? Among so many, however blinded and fanatic, and however fond of polygamy this is ever the first reproach-there must be some good Yet from the "chief impostor" to the last "acolyte," all are represented to be a gang of miscreants. The Mormons are far more tolerant; they have praise for those Gentiles, even federal officers, who have abstained from injuring them. They speak well of Lieutenant Colonel E. J. Steptoe, 9th Regiment of Infantry, and the officers of his force;* of General Wilson, afterward the Navy Agent at San Francisco; and of the present commandant, Colonel Cooke. They have nothing to say against Judge Reed, or Mr. John J. Kinney, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; and when Judge Leonidas Shaver died in 1855, they put the papers in mourning, and buried the Gentile in their cemetery. They do not abuse even their merchant rivals. Mr. J. B. Kimball, to mention no other, is generally praised and trusted. But when they find it necessary or advisable to take away a man's character, they can do it, "and no mistake." At the same time, their tolerance and discipline are, to say the least, remarkable. Judge Brocchus,+ to quote but one, would run the risk of being torn to pieces in almost any fanatical meeting in Europe. At Camp Floyd I was introduced to Colonel G. H. Crossman, Department Quarter-master General, and Major Montgomery of the same department; to Dr. Porter, who was uncommonly and unnecessarily shy upon the subject of a "sick certificate;" and to Lieutenant Ñ. A. M. Dudley, when we passed many a merry time over "simpkin." It is hardly necessary to say that the judge, having no authority to demand, did not obtain either escort or carriage. Colonel Cooke frankly told him that he had neither men nor conveyance at liberty, and even if they were that he could not exceed orders. The Secretary of War is ready to "be down" upon such offenses, and in the United States Army prob *Mr. Hyde (chap. vi.) gives the official document in which these officers petitioned President Pierce to reappoint Mr. Brigham Young as Governor and Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Utah Territory, and it speaks volumes in praise of the much-abused Saints. † Chap. vi. ably more officers throw up the service from distress for leave than in the English army. It was clear that we must travel without the dignities, so we inspected an ambulance and a four-mule team, for which the Hungarian refugee, its owner, asked $1000but little beyond its worth. After an exceedingly satisfactory day in a private sense, I passed the evening at Captain Gove's, and watched with astonishment the game of Boston. Invented by the French prisoners in the islands of the American Liverpool, and abounding in "grand misery," "little misery," and other appropriate terms, it combines all the difficulties of whist, écarté, piquet, brag, and cribbage, and seems to possess the same attractions which beam upon the mind of the advanced algebraic scholar. Fortunately there was an abundance of good commissariat whisky and excellent tobacco, whose attractions were greater than that of Boston. On the morrow, a gloomy morning, with cold blasts and spatters of rain from the southwest, and the tameness of the snowbirds-which here represent "Cock Robin and Jenny Wren, God Almighty's cock and hen❞— warned us that the fine season was breaking up, and that we had no time to lose. So, inspanning Julia and Sally, we set out, and after six hours reached once more the City of the Saints. CHAPTER VIII. Excursions continued. per I HAD long been anxious to visit the little chain of lakes in the Wasach Mountains, southeast of the city, and the spot where the Saints celebrate their "Great Twenty-fourth of July." At dinner the subject had been often on the carpet, and anti-Mormons had informed me, hinting at the presence of gold, that no Gentile was allowed to enter Cotton-wood Kanyon without a written mit from the President Prophet. Through my friend the elder I easily obtained the sign manual; it was explained to me that the danger of fires in a place which will supply the city with lumber for a generation, and the mischievousness of enemies, were at the bottom of the precaution. Before starting, however, two Saints were chosen to accompany me, Mr. S, and Mr., or rather Colonel, Feramorz, popularly called Ferry, Little. This gentleman, a partner, relative, and connection of Mr. Brigham Young, is one of the "Seventies;" of small and spare person, he is remarkable for pluck and hardihood, and in conjunction with Ephe Hanks, the Danite, he has seen curious things on the Prairies. A skittish, unbroken, stunted, weedy three-year-old for myself, and a tall mule for my companion, were readily lent by Mr. Ken |