Twelve Mormon Homes : Twelve Mormon homes visited in succession on a journey through Utah to Arizona.

Twelve Mormon Homes, page 019

After leaving Payson we rounded the head of Utah Lake, and climbed slowly up the gentle ascent between its basin and Juab Valley. The ground over which we traveled was strewn with cobble-stones, with here and there a deep pool of clear water. Such pools abound in this part of Utah, and many of them are considerably larger than they appear to the passer-by. The margin is overgrown by a coarse, strong grass, whose roots mat together and gradually encroach upon the surface, forming, in time, a floating edge, strong enough to bear a man. Cattle, how- ever, coming down to drink, over-weight it, and falling in, are frequently drowned. My attention was called to three particu- larly, stated by a sworn accuser of the Mormons to have been selected by him for conducting certain choice noyades ordered by Brigham Young. To believe the story, the dead thrown into these pools rose to the surface of the water, and rolled round and round for weeks ! 15, My husband assured me that the Juab Valley was a charming green plain in summer, and pointed out that even now in De- his seat on the grounds of his adherence to the principles of the Mormon church which Maxwell claimed were antagonistic to democratic principles. See Tullidge, History of Salt Lake City, pp. 596-601. 15This 7 no doubt, is a reference to two members of the Aiken party who were murdered and whose bodies were thrown into the waters of Punjun Springs, west of Mona, Utah. The Aiken party murders are treated in several books. See Charles Kelly and Hoffman Birney, Holy Murder, The Story of Porter Rockwell (New York: Milton Balch & Company, 1934), pp. 169-82; William A. Hickman, B~*ig- ham's Destroying Angel, Being the Life Confessions . . ., ed. by J. H. Beadle (New York: G. A. Crofutt, 1872), pp. 128-30 and Appendix F. The most recent and more reliable account is provided by Harold Schindler, Okn Porter Roc~weZZ, Man of God, Son of Thunder (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1966), pp. 268-79.