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Show 530 WESTERN WILDS. their crops ! And this, when every explorer for a century past had told of the Salt Lake gulls, which are certainly as much indigenous to the Great Basin as the blackbird is to Ohio ! There remains but one question in my mind : Could a man of Colonel Kane's acumen be so grossly deceived, or was there some other reason? But a little later Colonel Kane accidentally states a very important fact. Having endeavored to show that the Mormons in Illinois were sadly belied by their neighbors, who wanted to drive them away and get their property, he adds : " When they left Nauvoo all their fair-weather friends forsook them. Priests and elders, scribes and preach-ers, deserted by whole councils at a time ; each talented knave, of whose craft they had been victims, finding his own pretext for aban-doning them, without surrendering the money- bag of which he was the holder." So it appears there were " talented knaves " in the Church while it was at Nauvoo ; there were thieves who ran off with " money- bags," and " fair- weather friends " who used the Mormons. And yet while these people were in the Church, stealing from Gentiles and laying it to Saints, and stealing from Saints and laying it to Gen-tiles, Colonel Kane can find no reasqn for outside hostility to Xauvoo, except that the Gentiles wanted their property. He proves that nearly half the Nauvoo community was composed of adventurers from all parts of the country, " talented knaves" who proved to be thieves, and then maintains that the Illinois Gentiles were responsible for all the troubles there! Verily, benevolence is a grand sentiment; but it may be overdone. |