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Show 60 WESTERN WILDS. an oligarchy of slaveholders, and along the same paths trod by Wash-ington, black men were chased by republicans, or torn by blood- hounds, for the crime of seeking freedom, in sight of the very school- houses where boys declaimed in praise of William Tell. I visited the various communes, where a few enthusiastic spirits had sought to establish the Human Brotherhood on a basis of perfect equality. At New Harmony I found the short- lived experiment already a failure. Communia was even less satisfactory. The religious communes I found intolerable from their plentiful lack of common sense ; and in the others observed a grossness of conception that raised in my mind a wonder, not that they failed, but that they should ever have been established. I turned my steps toward Nauvoo, then rising into prominence as the last and greatest attempt to establish a religious brotherhood. But there I found all the evils of the old systems, with few of their corresponding benefits : priestcraft without its paternal care, greed without a thought of future reckoning insuring the defeat of its own aims, and a fanat-icism which scorned the commonest suggestions of prudence. That such a community would soon or late come into conflict with the neighboring Americans, was certain. " From Nauvoo, in the early months of 1842, I visited St. Louis, meeting there an agent of the American Fur Company, with whom I took employment. I was nearly cured of my early dreams, but still hoped that a land might be found where humanity would have a fairer chance, and rank and wealth confer no greater power than morals and intellect. I sought the Western Wilds to commune with nature in her unbroken solitudes, convinced that there, at least, the few residents were as brothers. But humanity's weakness is common alike to the city and the desert. On the vast plains, and amid the majestic mountains, wherever man meets man, the struggle goes on even more fiercely, though not more earnestly, than beneath the smooth surface of urban society. Every- where the strong and ambitious are struggling to the front, the weak and unskillful falling to the rear. Under the pressure of com-mon danger or common want, the pioneers do indeed become ' as brothers, for the safety of each is the good of all ; but the danger passed or the want supplied, egotism asserts itself even more fiercely for its temporary repression. Even as you have seen the unhurt buffa-loes gore a wounded mate to death, lest its struggles and bellowings attract the beast of prey, so the rushing crowd can not pause, lest he who is up to- day go down to- morrow. " February, 1843, found me at Fort Lancaster on the Platte, without any particular aim. There I met Colonel Warfield, in the service of |
