The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana)

by Robert Lewis Taylor

  Falling in with the humor, Coe shook his head. “You couldn’t convince me it’s glass. If I know anything about gems that mountain’s solid blue-white diamond.”

  “You don’t say,” said Bridger, studying Coe with new interest. “Well, now, you may be right. Next trip out, I’ll bring a jeweler with an eyeglass and have him look her over. Be worth a fortune, if it wasn’t flawed.”

  “Get up,” cried my father, swatting one of the mules. “We’ve got a journey to finish.” But in an hour, he’d forgotten the mountain and made the mistake of asking Bridger what he knew about California.

  “I’ve got a fair knowledge of it,” said Bridger. “I’ve been out three times, and enjoyed it, but wouldn’t care to live there.”

  “Why not?” demanded my father, bridling slightly.

  “Well, sir, I’d in nowise relish the longevity. No, when my threescore and ten’s up, as they say in the Book, I’ll be ready to call her off.”

  “What do you mean? What the deuce has longevity got to do with it? California’s just like every place else.”

  “Not exactly. There’s a difference in that respect,” said Bridger. “A few die on schedule, give or take a couple of decades, but the majority’ll go right on without a hitch. You never know they’ve aged. It’s the climate. Take the case of a man I know out there, name of Psalter, living north of Sacramento. If I remember right, he’ll be two hundred and fifty-five in November. He’s a tragic example, but there don’t seem to be any help for it. When he got to be two hundred, he was plumb wore out, wanted to die and get some rest. But he couldn’t make it, no matter what. He went to the priests and begged permission to commit suicide, but they thumbsed down on it—said there wasn’t any scriptural precedent.

  “Then his youngest sister—she couldn’t have been over a hundred and fifty and hadn’t been paid any attention to before, being the baby—came up with a fine idea. ‘Why don’t you move away, get out of the state, maybe that’ll work?’ she said. Well, sir, he was tickled pink. He arranged all his affairs and journeyed over into Nevada, and sure enough, he died, within a month. But he’d left in his will he wanted to be buried in California, so they plopped him down, after a beautiful service, in the Sacramento graveyard, with a marble slab to seal the bargain: ‘Horace E. Psalter. 1594-1794. Rest in Peace.’

  “However—” Bridger paused and squinted sideways at my father.

  “Yes, of course. I quite understand,” said my father in disgust, as if he was talking to an idiot.

  “Yes, sir,” said Bridger. “The climate was too much for him. He wouldn’t stay dead. He came back to life, and being a husky sort of fellow, he busted the box and pushed right out. He was perfectly resigned, last time I saw him. Says he don’t aim to make any more tries—he’ll stay on and die in California if it takes till Doomsday.”

  My father looked at him steadily for about a minute. “I want to thank you for the anecdote, Major Bridger,” he said at last. “You’ve cleared up a good deal of confusion in my mind about California.”

  “Any information I’ve got about it, you’re more than welcome. Situated where I am on the trail, I’m apt to hear more than most. I’ll try to think up some other points by and by.”

  “Pray don’t bother,” said my father stiffly. “There couldn’t possibly be anything else of importance.”

  The third day out from the Fort, we crossed the Wasatch Mountains and then came within view of Salt Lake, an eighty-mile sea with a number of very high islands thrusting up from its calm, silent waters. Thousands of waterfowl—geese, ducks, gulls and bigger birds on the surface, but they made little or no noise. Along with the fact that not a solitary tree, not so much as a two-foot bush, rose from the land nearby, it gave the region a feeling of being more dead than alive.

  Before supper, Po-Povi and I walked to the shore and tasted the water, which was brackish and bitter, puckering up your mouth, but in appearance it was as clear as a spring. You could see the bottom sloping down a long way out.

  Before we left camp, Major Bridger stated that a person couldn’t drown in this lake, unless they fell in upside down, but he said it used to be a lot saltier, and more buoyant. Then he began a story about trying to drive a stake in it with a maul, back in ‘32, but my father interrupted. I don’t think he could of stood any more, not right now.

  Later this fall, a group of Army engineers, sent from Washington to survey the Mormon territory, boiled down five gallons of water from Salt Lake and made what they called an “analysis.” My father copied it out in his Journals: “Out of the 5 gallons were recovered 14 pints of salt; the exact composition as follows:

  chloride of sodium 97.80%

  chloride of calcium 0.61

  chloride of magnesium 0.24

  sulphate of soda 0.23

  sulphate of lime 1.12

  _____

  100.00”

  We rode into the Mormon capital the next morning, but I’ll let my father’s letter, written some days afterward, tell the story:

  Plodding toward the amazingly treeless citadel, we beheld a party of men at the outskirts, dressed in buckskin or homespun, with black hats and chin whiskers, in an obvious attitude of toll collection, blocking the trail. This being an unheralded development, I queried Bridger, who said, “They’ve likely thought up a new dodge for raising revenue.”

  “Hold, brother,” said the foremost of these, stepping into the road. “Be ye Saints or Gentiles? Are ye from one of the other settlements?”

  “These good people ain’t Mormons,” said Bridger, “but they favor the Mormon ways and hope to pass the winter in Deseret, to recruit their strength.”

  “Oh, ho,” said the leader, taking a closer look. “It’s Bridger. The Prophet [meaning Brigham Young] preached a fire-and-brimstone sermon against you only this week.”

  “I’m mortal sorry to hear it,” said Bridger. “It’s a waste of his talents. The devil gone on vacation hereabouts?”

  “Blaspheme not,” one of the others spoke up sourly; then they came to the point and demanded a tax of one per cent on all the goods we were bringing into the city, barring spiritous liquors, which were taxable at half their sales price.

  This was a bitter blow, but there seemed no other way except to pay it, which we did, spending an hour haggling over the settlement.

  Bridger was the last through, and he caused offense by shaking out on a paper a pile of brown shreds, measuring it with great solemnity, adding a few particles, taking some away, and generally showing concern over the amount.

  “What is this rigmarole?” asked one of the collectors impatiently.

  “Baccy,’ said Bridger. “It’s all the goods I’ve brought, and I think you’ll find that pile right dead on one per cent, though I’ll weigh it if required.”

  The leader swept it onto the ground. “Pass on, ye godless, unserious man.” Then he added, raising his voice as we filed past, “Let me give you a word of advice. You won’t find any house to live in. What with Saints coming in from the European Stakes and the ones in the Sandwich Isles, plus all the gold immigrants wishing to rest, Zion’s crammed to the curbs. You’ll be obliged to sleep in your wagons.”

  Undisturbed, Bridger called back, “I expect Brigham Young’ll make a particular effort for such an old friend.”

  What a sight as we entered! The city is designed on a magnificent scale, being four miles in length and three in width, with very broad streets at right angles, each over a hundred and thirty feet wide, bordered by sidewalks of twenty feet. The blocks are forty rods square and are divided into eight lots each containing an acre and a quarter of ground.

  By ordinance, the houses must be back twenty feet from the street and the interval planted in suitable shrubs and trees. Alas, to date no trees have grown, and this lack presents a most depressing scene, which is relieved by the canals that run along most of the streets, somewhat in the spirit of Venice. These irrigations have been led in from the River Jordan, which runs to the northwest and c
reates great fertility on that level plain beyond the city.

  Mountains ascend in terraces on the north and east, and from their base a warm spring is conducted by pipes to a large community bath, a structure that has been said, (quite wrongly, I find) to embrace conduct of the most orgiastic kind. A surly itinerant (a disappointed gold-seeker) assured me “on my oath” that the elders there commonly bathe and fondle young girls of the congregation twice or thrice weekly, to prepare them for “plural marriage,” but this account I now know to be apocryphal in many details. Indeed these religious fanatics (for such it must be admitted they are) have been shamefully abused throughout their comparatively brief existence.

  As you may know, the sect was organized by one Joseph Smith, of Vermont, by profession a house painter and glazier, who had the good fortune to be visited by an angel, who informed him that, should he care to travel to a hill near Palmyra, New York, he would find buried the prophetic records of a tribe of Jews who had immigrated to America in the time of Zedekiah, circa 600 B.C. (This latter movement would appear to be something of a miracle in itself, since history has no record of these wandering gentry that I am able to discover.)

  In any event, Smith made all haste to Palmyra and located a square stone box, as he reported, but upon attempting to break into it, he was felled by an invisible blow whose origin was celestial. The trouble was simple: he was not yet ready for so portentous a revelation. Indeed, it was not until after four years of penitence that Smith was permitted access to the box, which proved to contain not only certain holy weapons but a number of golden plates, united by rings and scribbled over with writing. These Smith declared should be the Book of Mormon, the foundation of his new creed.

  Apparently, Smith was a restless fellow, uniquely jumpy in the development of his religion, so that we next find him in a wood in Pennsylvania, baptizing, (and being baptized by) a convert named Cowdery, in the Susquehanna River. Also present, as witnesses, we are told, were a number of spirits who had made their mark some years before in the mortal phase, including Moses and Elias. The scene now shifts to Fayette, New York, for no reason that I can discover, where the first real organization was made, in 1830. And then, when the student has perhaps become geographically adjusted, we find a monster temple in construction at Kirtland, Ohio.

  Here, we should observe that the Latter-Day Saints, for such they called themselves, were not overly popular with the neighboring commonalty, or non-Saints. They were unwinning. And while I believe the Mormons to have been treated shabbily often, there exist arguments on the other side. Without doubt, they have been in their travels as inflexible, bigoted, and mulish as most religious fanatics, and made no attempt to adjust to any host community where they settled.

  At any rate, Ohio proved not to be the promised land, so, leaving the monster temple incompleted (as was the Tower of Babel, earlier), they shifted to Missouri, a place revealed to Smith in a vision as being “the new Jerusalem … the spot where the Garden of Eden bloomed, and Adam was formed.” Grievous to relate, the lay residents there cared practically nothing for the vision, and doubts were even expressed that the area, a horticultural blank, was the original Garden of Eden. Persecutions followed; many Mormon leaders were imprisoned for “treason,” which was, of course, absurd, and in one jail a number of confined Saints were served, as food, roasted flesh of their colleagues. (The cruelty that “civilized” people can practice upon each other often passes belief.)

  So, at length, Smith led his flock out of angry and small-minded Missouri to the town of Nauvoo, in Illinois, where for a space prosperity smiled. Their community grew to a populace of twenty thousand souls, all with a corner on salvation, you may be sure, and a more industrious group probably never lived. But even here they aroused resentment by their flinty notions of dogma, their unbending superiority, and their practice of “plural,” or “spiritual,” marriage, which I shall develop at a later date. At every turn of the road, these hardy folk met bad luck besides making many bone-headed blunders on their own. Nauvoo, for reasons I do not properly understand, became a center of horse thieves and counterfeiters, along with the godly pursuits, and what was the inevitable result? Why, everybody threw the blame on the Mormons. It was as natural as breathing, though maybe there were cases of justification, too. Upshot was that Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum (with the subsidiary rank of Patriarch) were murdered, shot down, while trying to leap from the window of a jail in nearby Carthage, in 1844.

  Brigham Young, as the Lord’s Prophet and Seer, with the official title of First President, took over the reins, no enviable job for anybody with normal instincts for self-protection. And shortly afterward the Saints had what must be remarked as perhaps their first wholly workable notion: they would remove to the Western wilderness, far from the haunts of men, and pursue their theological star in whatever manner they thought fit. In brief, they foresaw that they could live in tolerance, peace and good-neighborliness as long as they didn’t have any neighbors. Accordingly they began a laborious march from Illinois and Missouri, with the heartiest assistance of most residents along the route—this latter frequently taking the form of rocks, broken bottles, dead cats and scattered gunfire—and made a temporary, if unwelcome, stop at Montrose, Iowa, where they were received with every discourtesy. But they wrought improvements in organization, then, acquiring wagons and livestock, pressed forward toward the setting sun, finally arriving on the far bank of the Missouri River, beyond the limits of state jurisdiction. But their troubles were by no means over. Beyond reach of the States, they ran afoul of the Federals, in the form of an undoubtedly biased requisition from the U. S. Army of five hundred Mormons “for military service against the Mexicans.” Still, the Mormons were not actually conscripted; we must give the Government that much, at least. They were “ordered to volunteer.” Be it said to their credit that these tough-fibred men, who had as much interest in the Mexicans as they did in the inhabitants of Central Borneo (and most assuredly were not mad at them) patriotically took leave of their families, under conditions of extreme privation, and did their military stint with distinction. The women, children and old persons, meanwhile, sustained life by dining off berries and roots and living in sod huts or caves. As might be expected, a good many sickened and died; their cattle, too, starved or were stolen by Indians.

  Elsewhere it has been noted that faith conquers all, and in 1847, with the men returned, we find the Mormons again on the road for the West. An advance guard reached Salt Lake on the twenty-first of July. From this point their prodigious outlays of energy made progress a certainty, although there was a period in that winter, before crops were grown, when they ate the hide roofs of the dwellings they had erected. The main body of the sect arrived the following Spring, and the city was begun in earnest. Crops were sown, grist and sawmills erected, elaborate irrigation carried out, construction of homes and common buildings commenced on a large scale, and a “provisional State Government” devised, with a petition forwarded to Washington asking full recognition for the new “State of Deseret,” the mystic word taken, in some fashion, from their Book of Mormon, and signifying, with ear-catching lilt, “Land of the Honey-Bee.”

  So much for history. (As I read over the foregoing, I see that I have fallen into a vein verging on the flippant. This does not imply disrespect for the Mormons. It is simply that I have suffered, through my lifetime, from an inability to view with seriousness any extreme form of organized religion. It is something beyond my comprehension as a reasoning man. But I hope to keep an open mind as our adventures progress in this God-fearing land of the Mormons.)

  Altogether, the population of Salt Lake City now numbers eight thousand, being disposed in neat, clean houses of adobe, or sun-dried brick, which makes a warm shelter in winter and a remarkably cool retreat in summer, a season that can turn most intemperate in this valley.

  A huge square has been appropriated for public buildings, and a shed upon poles erected to accommodate upward of three thousand persons. Th
is is known as “the Bowery,” being intended to serve until they have completed a Great Temple, an edifice that I am informed will be the largest house of worship on earth.

  These dedicated if stern and curious people remain infused with bustle and drive. Already they operate a mint that issues gold coins of the Federal denominations, stamped, without assay, out of dust brought in from California. Whether this is legal, I cannot say, nor do they seem to care. Apprehension regarding the opinion of others is not one of the Mormon weaknesses.

  When once we entered the city, Bridger took us to the Bowery in search of Brigham Young, who at length sent word that he was, at that moment, “unavailable for palaver with the Gentile, Major Bridger.”

  In lieu of this exalted personage, we gained the ear of an elder, one Ezra T. Benson, a dry, practical-looking man with sandy hair, wearing steel spectacles, who at first said there was no rental space to be had in any dwelling. Then he advised us to return later, as he was occupied in forming a committee, together with the Prophet, to carry out certain town road projects. Though not personable in the English social, or charm, sense, Benson appeared unhostile and even helpful within his limits. He is an earnest, able man, and his descendants, Mormon or “Gentile,” will make their mark in the America of the future. Before we left, he informed us that a large room in the southeast corner of the State House has been converted to an eating establishment for the accommodation of emigrants and laborers on the public works, to be called the Deseret Boarding House, where one may obtain a meal of milk, bread, butter, radishes, onions, and slaw for a few pennies. Thither we repaired for a noon repast of welcome fresh vegetables and dairy products, items we have missed very sorely these past four months.

  Later—We are in luck. Having wandered separately over the city for hours, we returned to the Bowery and found that Coe, in the interim, had obtained a large “double” house—such structures are common in the practice of plural marriage—from a Welsh family that will go to the gold fields for the winter. That is, if my suspicions are correct, the family is now able to go, with the sum that Coe has advanced for their dwelling. I queried him about this outlay, but with his usual close-mouthed attitude toward money, he simply murmured that it was “modest” and that he “actually” disliked taking advantage of the Welshman, a silent, gloomy fellow named Llewellyn. We are told that Brigham Young is incensed over the family’s decision, feeling that the California gold fields are the source of much evil, and that he has extracted a promise from Llewellyn to return next June, win or lose, upon pain of excommunication. Young’s hatred of the loose morals prevailing in California borders on mania. In a recent sermon, we are informed, he rallied the women of Salt Lake about Paris fashions, and I quote verbatim, as follows (with apologies): “Just because all the whores in San Francisco wear funny hats is no reason why we must wear them. If they wore piss-pots on their heads, no doubt you women would feel obliged to follow suit.”