| OCR Text |
Show POLYGAMIA. 101 overhead, and fanned by the soft airs of autumn in that most delight-ful climate. The coves opening back into the mountains were rich in bunch- grass, in which jack- rabbits were abundant ; sage hens and other small fowl were numerous on the plain, and large flocks of ducks were found along the stream. The Sevier Valley has an aver-age elevation of five thousand feet above the sea ; the summers are mild, and in winter snow rarely falls to any depth ; cattle live on the range nine months in the year, and yet the region is free from the scorching heat of Arizona. Very little of the valley is cultivable, hoAvever; stock- ranching is the principal occupation. We passed through seven Availed towns, which had been abandoned by the Mor-mons on account of hostile Indians, and were still uninhabited. At Marysvale, last town on the Sevier, we found the Mormons return-ing to their homes, peace having been made with the Indians. There we turned into the mountains, and toiled for six hours in advancing * ~ six miles up Pine Gulch. One moment we were on the edge of a narrow track where an overturn would have sent us a hundred feet into the bed of the stream, and the next struggling through a narrow chasm at the bottom of the gulch, with walls of granite rising on both sides of us, and above them the sloping sides of the caflon half a mile in height, and covered with timber to the very summit. The roaring brook, now beside us, now far below us, and again dashing against our wagon wheels, seemed to be singing of the snowy heights whence it came; and at every point where a depression or obstructing rock formed a pool, the shining mountain trout were to be seen in numbers through the clear fluid, though its temperature was but little above that of ice- water. After a week in this new mining region, I returned to Salt Lake City, and to the normal condition of a polemic editor. The tide had turned. The Gentiles were coming in again, mostly to engage in mining, and in a year from that date the Territory contained several thousand non- Mormons. By the autumn of 1871, all the mountains of central Utah were dotted with miners' cabins and traversed by pros-pectors. By 1875, there was a non- Mormon population in Utah of fifteen or twenty thousand, with a political organization, churches, schools, and daily papers of their own, having political control of one county and half a dozen towns. But the old conflict goes on just the same. A theocracy never yields power till compelled to. The young Mormons welcome the change ; the older ones, and especially the priesthood, only regret that they were not more severe and ex-clusive when they had the power. But Mormonism in a family never |
