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Show 144 TEAVELS AND ADVENTUEES IN THE FAE WEST. and when we take into consideration their general character previously, we cannot but believe in their sin^ cerity. Nine-tenths of this vast population are the peasantry of Scotland, England and Wales, originally brought up with religious feelings at Protestant parish churches. I observed ho Catholic proselytes. They have been induced to emigrate, by the offers of the Mormon missionaries to take them free of expense, to their land flowing with milk and honey, where, they are told, the Protestant Christian religion is inculcated in all its purity, and where a farm and house are bestowed gratuitously upon each family. Seduced by this independence from the state of poverty which surrounds them at home, they take advantage of the opportunity and are baptized into the faith of the "latter day saints," and it is only after their arrival in the Yalley that the spiritual wife system is even mentioned to them. Thousands of families are now in Utah who are as much horrified at the name of polygamy, as the most carefully educated in the enlightened circles of Europe and America. More than two-thirds of this population (at least, this is the ratio of my experience) cannot read or write, and they place implicit faith in their leaders, who, in a pecuniary point of view, have fulfilled their promise; each and all of them are comfortably provided with land and tenements. The first year they, of course, suffer privations, until they build their houses and reap their crops1; yet all their necessities in the meantime are provided for by the church, and in a social point of view, they are much happier than they could ever hope to have been at their native homes. From being tenants at will of an imperious and exacting landlord, they suddenly become land holders, in their own right-free |