to ease the smart. In Utah we have one consolation : all the honest
work on the mine was done by Gentile residents; all the fraud was
perpetrated by men who live outside of Utah, some of them our
worst enemies. But we have suffered most of the ill effects. A
cloud was thrown upon Utah mines which delayed our progress for
two years.

In May I went to Washington City, as agent for the Corinne Gren-
tiles, and remained two months and a half. The next December and
January I also spent in Washington on the same mission. We were
without representation in any legislative byly, and our only recourse
was to have an agent at Washington, who, besides being unofficial in
character, had the constant hostility of the Mormon delegate in the



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TWO YEARS OF CHANGE. 121

House of Representatives. It was then I learned the miseries of a
lobbyist. Then I knew what it was to wait wearily on legislative ac-
tion; to besiege the doors of congressmen and ask favors I could
not return, and cool my heels in the ante-chambers of official great-
ness. It was poison to the soul of a mountaineer. Of all the varied
employments I have taken a hand at, I look back with the least satis-
faction upon this Washington experience. I do not wonder that lob-
byists are suspected of monstrous sins and multitudinous petty crimes.
Surely one who should follow the business long would be mean enough
for any thing.

In midsummer I attended the remarkable debate in the Taber-
nacle at Salt Lake City,
between Rev. J. P. New-
man and Orson Pratt,
which ended as might
have been expected,
each party claiming the
victory for its own
champion. It did not
interest me as it might
have done two years
before; for I had been
long enough in Utah to
know that polygamy
was far from being the
worst evil of Mormon-
ism. To its victims it
is doubtless a horrible
institution, but to the
on-looking Gentile it
partakes more of the
nature of a comedy.
As for instance, when it
is gravely announced by
some old frog of an
elder, that *'a man can 't
git no exaltation in the mormon wives por summer a»d winter.

celestial world Hhout he 's gone into plurality.'' Or when one learns
that it is the style among the wealthy to have three wives ; while
your true saintly epicure, if unable to affi)rd three, has at least " a
lum wife for summer and a fat one for winter.,"



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122 WESTERN WILDS.

But occasionally comedy and tragedy are united, as in the case
of Bishop Smith, married to two of his cousins and two of his
nieces ; or in that of Elder Allsop, who has a mother and daughter
for wives, both mothers of his children, the whole brood living
together in a little cabin. In the southern part of Utah may be
seen two towns without parallels in America — Taylorsville and
Winnville. Two worthy Mormon patriarchs. Elder Taylor and
Elder Winn, have each taken numerous " wives,'^ and each of their
sons has done the same. The result is two villages, in one of which
all the inhabitants are Taylors, and in the other all Winns. The
Taylors have been the better Saints, and outnumber the others two
to one, which is very disheartening to the Winfts. Old man Winn
is reported to have said, to an official who visited him not long ago,
that life to him was but a weary desert, and at times he felt like
fainting by the way-side. At other times he declared that never
more would he go through the Endowment House and take another
young wife, "for that old Taylor can just naturally raise two chil-
dren to my one.*'

After six weeks' travel in the mines, and a winter's work for
Gentile interests, the opening months of 1871 found me again a
traveler. This time I came eastward, and, after a brief rest, made
a tour of the Missouri Valley. I had been three years in the Far
West, and before I relate more extensive journeys, perhaps this is
as good a place as any to present a general view of our Territories
and the adjacent States.

First let it be noted that our maps give no idea of the nature of
the country ; they do not show the comparative elevation and bar-
renness. Here and there on the common maps may be seen the
words "Great American Desert," the assumption being that all the
rest of the region is fertile. The fact is that barrenness is the rule
and fertility the exception ; though much of the land that is not
cultivable still furnishes a coarse grass.

Draw a line on longitude 100° from British America to Texas;
then go 800 miles westward, and draw another from British America
to Mexico, and all the area between these two lines — 800 by 1200
miles in extent; or in round numbers a million square miles — is
the "American Desert:" a region of varying mountain, desert, and
rock; of prevailing drought or complete sterility, broken rarely by
fertile valleys; of dead volcanoes and sandy wastes; of excessive
chemicals, rock, gravel, and other inorganic matter. Only the lower
valleys, bordering perennial streams, or more rarely some plateau



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TWO YEARS OF CHANG K 123

on which water can be brought from .the mountains for irrigation^ or
still more rarely a green plat in some corner of the mountains where
there is an unusual amount of rain, or percolation of moisture from
above, constitute the cultivable lands ; all the rest is rugged mount-
ain, rocky flat, gravel bed, barren ridge scantily clothed with sage-
brush, greasewood or bunch-grass, or complete desert — the last cover-
ing at least one-third of the entire region.

The reasons for this sterility are many: Elevation and consequent
cold ; drought caused by the trend of the bordering mountains and
direction of ^the prevailing winds ; rock in all forms, and such de-
structive chemicals as salt and alkali. Wyoming contains 98,000
square miles, and not a foot of land less than 4,000 feet high. Colo-
rado has about the average elevation of Wyoming, Denver being
nearly on the level of Cheyenne. Manifestly the high plains of these
two Territories can never be of value except for grazing. Utah, as
reduced, contains over 60,000 square miles; but, except iwssibly a
few of the sunken deserts of the south, the lowest valley is higher
than the average summit of the Alleghany Mountains, the surface of
the Salt Lake being 4,250 feet above the sea.

Hundreds of little valleys in the Rocky Mountains, beautiful as
the Vale of Rasselas from May till October, rich in grass and game,
are yet useless to the farmer; grain can not be made to grow in
them by any art of the husbandman. In Parley's Park, Heber C.
Kimball tried for seven years to raise wheat; it was invariably "cut
off in the flower'' by the September frosts. At Soda Springs, Idaho,
6,500 feet above sea-level, the " Morrisite " Mormons tried farming
for years; but only succeeded with rye and potatoes, which will ma-
ture in a three-months' summer. On all the higher plains of Wyom-
ing, frost may be looked for with certainty every month in the
year. At the Navajo farms — in Arizona — I have seen icicles six
inches long on the rocks, only 300 feet above the fields, on the 18th
of June ; and, in 1871, when the Indians had, with great labor,
brought forward a crop of corn, and planted orchards, on the night
of May 31st a storm of sleet froze every plant and tree solid to the
ground. Nor are these such difficulties as can be overcome by in-
dustry; we must wait till nature flattens out the country and brings
it down into the region of warm air and abundant moisture.

If all the low lands were fertile, there would still be a large area
for agriculture; but they are far more barren than the mountains,
except those tracts lying immediately at the base of the ranges, or in
low valleys along some perennial stream. Every-where in the larger



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124 WESTERN WILDS.

basins the land at a distance from the mountains is a complete desert,
genenilly whitened by alkali. For days of travel the face of nature
is a dirty white, and in dry weather an acrid and irritating dust
powders the traveler until all races are of one hue. In every Terri-
tory are found such tracts, known by suggestive names : The Jornada
del JHuerto, or "Journey of the Dead," in New Mexico; the Salt
Desert, west of Great Salt Lake, covering 5,000 square miles; the
Great Nevada Desert, 25,000 square miles of utter desolation ; the
White Desert, Red Desert, Mohave Desert, Skull Valley, Death Val-
ley, the 3Iala Paid of the Spaniard and the Mauvaisea Terrea of the
French voyageur. Where the stage route crosses such a tract, the
animals labor through a cloud of dust, and the coach drags heavily ;
the wheels "cry" as they grind in the sand and soda, and the pas-,
sengers endure as best they can the irritation to eye and nostril and
the slime formed upon the body by dust and sweat. This penetrating
alkaline powder sifts in at the smallest crevice, and even the clothing
in a valise is often covered by it.

Such are the worst sections of the West. Next above them are the
grassy plains, though still unfit for agriculture. Of the million square
miles above bounded, at least one-third producer bunch-grass, which
chiefly differs from the verdure of the East in that it never forms a
continuous sod or green sward; it grows in scattered clumps, six or
eight to the square rod, or thicker where the locality is favorable.
One can span a bunch at the roots, but above it spreads ; sometimes
several bunches grow so as to form a clump a foot wide. It is never
of a deep green, and for three-quarters of the year is a regular gray-
brown ; hence an Eastern man might ride all day through rich past-
ures of it, and think himself in a complete desert. It gets its entire
growth in about six weeks, some time between January and July,
according to the locality. It then cures upon the ground, and stands
through the year looking very much like bunches of broom-sedge.
It is as nutritious as ripe oats, the species with a white top, containing
a small black seed, being particularly fattening. With it animals
make journeys of a thousand miles without an ounce of grain; with-
out it, nine-tenths of America between meridians 100*^ and 120® would
be totally worthless.

Probably the most disappointing feature in Rocky Mountain scenerj-,
to. all new-comers, is the absence of a green landscape ; for with rare
exceptions the traveler's eye does not rest in summer upon an unvary-
ing carpet of green as in the East. The bunch-grass is a pale green,
or quite gray or yellow ; the small sage-brush is white, and the large



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TWO YEARS OF CHANGE. 125

variety blue ; the greasewood is a dirty white, and the earth and rocke
white, yellow or red; the general result is a neutral gray, which
seems to shroud all creation in sober tints. One may ride all day
through good bunch-grass pasture and his horse be walking in sand
all the time; or through a tolerably rich country and never see an
acre of that lively emerald which is the charm of an Ohio landscape.
A plat of green sward is a rare sight in the Rocky Mountains; but
eastward^ on the high plains, other grasses appear, changing by slow
degrees to the heavy verdure of the Missouri Valley.

Last, and least in extent, are the arable tracts, which are all the
more fertile from receiving the wash of the high lands; they are in
feet the most fertile in the world. Utah alone contains some fifty
valleys, of every ¥ridth from one mile to fifteen ; in them the soil needs
only water to produce thirty and sixty and a hundred-fold. But
between one such valley and the next, intervene from five to fifty
miles of rocky ridges, gravel plains or alkali beds, the first two per-
haps yielding bunch grass, the last a waste. In Nevada the propor-
tion of good land is much less,* in Wyoming least of all, though that
Territory has immense tracts of good grazing land. Up to 5,000 feet
above the sea all the fruits and grains of the temperate zones are
produced in abundance, above that the products lessen rapidly. In a
few places wheat can be grown at or above the 6,000 foot level ; rye
and oats 2,000 feet higher, and near Central City, Colorado, I have
seen heavy crops of potatoes produced at 9,000 feet above the sea.
Even the highest parks, where the snow is six feet deep in wihter, and
does not melt away till the middle of May, often produce heavy crops
of grass ; but neither fruit nor grain can be grown there.

The want of water hinders settlement in many places where the
land is fertile. If every drop in Utah were utilized, it would not
irrigate one-tenth of the Territory. If the Ohio River were turned
into the north-west comer of the Great Basin, not a drop of it would
ever reach the Colorado above ground; the hot sun, dry air, gravel
beds and alkali plains would absorb it all. Southward this difficulty
steadily increases ; the water is scantier while more is needed. In the
Rio Grande Valley a given area requires from two to three times as
much water as in the Platte Valley. The Mormons in Arizona put five
times as much water on an acre as the Mormons in Idaho. The trav-
eler among the mountains of the Great Basin finds in the higher
calions hundreds of streams of which not one survives to reach the
valley ; scores of " rivers " are marked upon the maps, which do not
contain a drop of water afl^r the first of June. South of latitude 37*^



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126 WESTERN WILDS.

or 38^, even the attempt to secure a reservoir for the summer irriga-
tion fails; when the water above the dam has risen two or three
feet, it seeks an underground course through the porous soil, and
when most needed the aguada is dry. In Arizona I found evidences
that the old race (Aztec or Toltec?) had tried to remedy this by "pud-
dling'' the bottom of the aguada, in places even laying it with bricks
made of most tenacious clay ; but even they were in time compelled to
abandon most of the valleys by the ever-increasing drought,

A Western man may be allowed a smile at the suggestion of Pres-
ident Grant, that all the streams issuing eastward from the Rocky Mount-
ains might be utilized by a great National work, so as to irrigate all
the plains. Such a work would cost hundreds of millions, while every
drop of water in all those streams would not irrigate one-tenth of the
vast slope extending three hundred miles eastward from the mountains.
Many suggestions are made as to new methods of cultivation to meet
the difficulties. Drought might possibly be overcome, but I see not
how rocky flats, gravel -beds and plains of sand and alkali can ever be
made productive. If there is a total change in the climate, corres-
ponding changes in the land will of course follow in due time; but
that does not seem to me imminent. To sum up : At least nine-tenths
of America between longitude 100° and 120° seem to me irredeemable
(for agriculture) by any art now knovvn to man.

Important political consequences follow. Such a country can never
sustain a dense population. The isolated trading town or mining
hamlet, with perhaps half a dozen cities of 50,000 people, and detached
farming settlements, will occupy a very small portion of the whole
area ; all the rest will be the range of the nomadic hunter or herds-
man. The limit of rapid settlement, (unless from a mining excite-
ment,) is already reached ; the phenomena of swiftly growing States
like Iowa and Illinois will never be witnessed again in this country.
None of the Territories, except possibly Dakota, is increasing in popu-
lation as fast as are the States. Utah, for instance, has been settled
thirty years by a race whose constant boast is their prolificacy ; it has
barely 100,000 people. This, the most loudly blowed and persistently
advertised of the whole sisterhood, has been knocking for admission
into the Union since 1849 ; yet it has but one-tenth the population of
New York City, two-fifths that of Cincinnati, and nothing like the
wealth or intelligence of a first-class county in Ohio. In the pro-
posed State one Mormon would have a power in the United States
Senate equal to that of thirty Christians in Ohio, or fifty in New
York. In Nevada the inequality is far worse, though that State has



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TWO YEAE8 OF CHANQR 127

wealth and intelligence to aid us. Wyoming can not sustain a jwpu-
lation equal to that of Rhode Island ; Idaho is scarcely more fertile ;
the child is not born that will live to see half a million people
resident in the Great Basin. Colorado, has a population nearly equal
to that of Utah; New Mexico has a population equal perhaps to that
it had three hundred years ago.

It is evident that our form of government must be modified for
such communities. Ideal civil systems may furnish amusement for
scholars ; but a people can only use such a goverment as it has grown
to. That "lynch law '* should largely prevail all over the West, was
as natural, nay, as imperative, as that common and statute law should
prevail in New England. Wyoming, for instance, contains 98,000
square miles, and less than 20,000 people ; an area more than twice the
size of Pennsylvania, with half the population of an average county!
Along the Pacific Railway, in the southern part of the Territory, are
a few trading towns ; all the rest is grassy plains, mountain and desert,
traversed only by mining, wooding, hunting or herding parties. A
criminal can take a horse from any town and be in the trackless wilder-
ness in two hours. When arrested according to statute a posse must
convey him perhaps hundreds of miles, to the nearest jail, and all the
witnesses must take the same trip three or four times. Perhaps before
final trial there is a mining " stampede,'' or an Indian war, and all the
witnesses leave. It would never do. Justice must be brought home
to every little hamlet, and so the Themis of the Rocky Mountains is a
wild huntress. The few inhabitants must act promptly before the
criminal has time to escape ; if it is rape, arson, murder or an aggra-
vated case of horse-stealing, he dies ; if a minor offense, a severe cow-
hiding suffices. Who shall blame them ? Justice must be administered,
or no man's life is safe an hour. It is charged that they sometimes
make mistakes. I have not heard that the regular courts are infallible.

The Territories will soon present an awkward question. It will
never do to admit any more " rotten -borough " States; it would de-
moralize the Senate, and destroy all decent respect for the Federal
sj'stem. We have already gone dangerously near to that consumma-
tion. In certain contingencies one-fifth of the people could elect a
President against the united voice of the four-fifths. And yet the
territorial condition is anomalous, and to some extent unrepublicaii.
A great reform would be to allow them to choose all their executive
officers; the President to appoint only such officials as attend to
United States business. Utah might be annexed entire to Nevada;
the two would then make a State with population enough for one



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128 WESTERN WILDS.

Representative in Congress— -this to be done after Brigham Young,
dies, and the Mormon Church ceases to rule. The other Territories
might be given more self-government, without the gross injustice of
making them States, which is almost as great a wrong to them as
to the older States. It is self-evident that an alpine region like
Wyoming, needs a totally different government from that of a level
State like Illinois. Perhaps the cantonal system might be the best, as
far as it gives each little valley local self-government.

The present system is an affliction to the pioneers. Had not Utah
stood in the way as a possible danger, it would have been remedied
ere this. The demand for good appointees from the President is al-
most futile. The sad fact is : Government can not afford good men
in office in most of the Territories ; the salaries are so much less than
they can make at any legitimate business. And worse still, when
they try to do their duty they are almost certain to be removed be-
fore they learn how. An Eastern man is worth very little his first
year or two in any Territory. The official, if honest, is exposed to a
constant pressure from those ruled over, and a constant war on the
President to have him removed. If he had no care but doing his
duty, he would still have trouble enough ; but efficiency and duty are
no dependence upon the favor of the administration ; * and while the
official in the Territory is harassed by complaints, by a salary insuffi-
cient for himself and family, by the damning criticisms or equally
damning overpraise of the local press, he is more and more disquieted
by notes from his friends at Washington, where the fiat of Executive
wrath hangs daily over his official head, like the ever-trembling
sword of Damocles suspended by a single hair. There are men in
every territorial capital who turn uneasily upon their beds from
some dark hint in the evening paper, and whose matin slumbers are
disquieted by anxiety for the morning paper, to see " the latest from
Washington." Let certain members and senators die, or resign, or
be defeated, or differ with the President on some pet scheme, and
away their heads would go like pins from the alley; and the more
they had done their duty* the more they might expect decapitation.
Hear, then, my conclusion of the whole matter : the system should be
completely reorganized, so as to give the Territories self-government,
and allow their delegates in the House to vote as well as talk ; then
they should so remain, to be hunting and roving ground for the rest of
the nation till climate and soil change, or some other cause shall have
made them rich and populous.

•Written previous to March 4, 1877.



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CHAPTER IX.

THE HISSOUBI VALLEY.

At noon of a scorching day, our party landed from a Missouri Pa-
cific train in Kansas City — a modern Rome built on seventeen hills
instead of seven. Its citizens have ambitious hopes equal to those of
ancient Romans, but for commerce instead of war. Real estate is set
on edge in Kansas City ; so it logically follows there is twice the profit
in it. So the citizens would seem to judge, from the prices they ask
for lots. A new-comer, looking for an investment, was pointed to a
cone-shaped tract by the owner who was Avilling to sell.

"But is n't it too steep and rough ?'' he asked.

"Just what you want," was the reply; " see that lot down there?" —
pointing to a funnel-shaped plat some hundreds of feet below — " well,
the man that owns that will give you $5,000 for this hill to level up
his lot with."

Next day he was approached by the owner of the lower lot. "Is n't
it too low and wet?" he asked. "Oh, my goodness, no ! lyyou see
that hill ? Well, the owner of that has got to level it, and he'll give
you $1,000 for the privilege of dumping it on this lot." The " pil-
grim " did not invest.

This is the metropolis of western Missouri and eastern Kansas, and;
adds immensely to the wealth and population of Jackson County — the
" Land of Zion," according to the revelations of Joe Smith. Hither
in the spring of 1831, came the Mormon Prophet and followers, lo-
cated the New Jerusalem at Independence, and prophesied a greater
glopy than earth had ever known. They notified the citizens that it
was idle for them to open &rms or build houses ; they were standing
in the way of the Lord, who would sweep the land with destruction.
But the Gentiles saw the matter in a different light ; they gathered
their forces, and after a sharp fight, in which two were killed and
niany hurt, drove the Saints across the Missouri into Clay County.
Jackson now contains a population equal to that of Utah, and five
times as much wealth. It is indeed a goodly land. Prairie and grove
alternate in pleasing variety; every commanding knoll is the site of a
Jicat hamlet, every little grove contains a tasteful farm-house, while the

9 (129)



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130 WESTERN WILDS.

open prairie is rich in all the fruits and grains of this clime. The
Saints made a good selection for Zion. Could they have held it, they
would doubtless have prospered as have the Gentiles; but the Prophet
proposed, and the Missourians disposed, and things are as they are.

Thence we crossed the Kaw into Kansas^ and in a two hours' ride
up the heavily wooded valley of that stream reached Lawrence, the
Athens of the Missouri valley, a town rich in historic interest and
pleasant to dwell in. In the summer of 1849, a party of gold-hunters
camped for the night near the junction of the Kaw and Wakarusa,