within a half-hour after the leader named the spot where the new city should arise. He managed to save the seed. The first scanty crop of the colonists was attacked by grasshoppers, and gulls came from the great lake and devoured them. In this Brigham saw a miracle, and the gull is held in the same reverence in Utah that the stork enjoys in Germany. In the Great Salt lake Brigham saw the Dead sea, and in the river which skirts it the Jordan. To him the journey across the plains was as the exodus of Israel's children. Everything was bent to his will and purpose. In creating his system he was arbitrary, and at times almost tyrannical, but he needed to be for, as Macaulay says of Hasting's rule in India, he was as the baker who, before he can bake a loaf, must first till the soil, reap, build a mill, and erect an oven. The new temple, which was forty years building and which was recently dedicated, is a splendid monument to the genius of Brigham Young. It cost five million dollars. Before its dedication invitations were sent to many Gentile citizens to visit and inspect it, but now it is a holy sanctuary into which only the elect may come. They who enter enjoy eternal life. The temple, massive and pervading as it is, will not stand the application of the strict rules of architecture. It is unique. It is the creation of Brigham Young from foundation to the gilded heraldic angel, Maroni, on the topmost spire. So is the Eagle Gate, with its twenty-mile street leading up to it, the Bee-Hive, the Lion House, and the Endowment House. From tabernacle to temple and tithing-houses, the architecture is Brighamesque. Salt Lake City, with its sixty thousand inhabitants, its inviting foliage, its parks, its temples, its factories, its homes-many of them not larger in superficial area than a sleeping-car-stands as the noblest example of organic colonization in the world. The new temple, to be appreciated, must be seen from a plateau behind the city. It then looms up in majestic lines, lacking the Gothic grace of the Milan cathedral, but filling the whole valley with its ponderous proportions, somber, yet inspiring. No one can give intelligen: study to the career of Brigham Young without admiration for the genius which directed him. He would have been a great man and leader in any department of life. What a soldier he would have made! One sees in the shop windows of Salt Lake City a print representing Prophet Joseph Smith, mounted and in the uniform of a lieutenant-general of the Mor mon forces. Turn from his sharp profile and peculiar, protuberant nose to the stern, strong-willed, massive face of Brigham Young, and you have a contrast in forcefulness as striking as that afforded by a corn-stalk militiaman and the Duke of Wellington. In the early days Brig ham laid down as his policy: "It is cheaper to feed Indians than to fight them." Yet when nothing but fight would answer the savages he accommodated them. How many lives the Young policy would have saved had our resentful frontiersmen followed it! It must have been early apparent to Brigham Young that his system could not stand up against the encroachments of the outer world, else why did he not assert the doctrine of isolation at the outset? The great valley was his and for his people, and yet the Gentiles came and camped within his gates in the fifties To every religious sect that set itself up in Salt Lake City he gave a building lot. The Catholics, open and eternal foes of Mormonism, have there to-day a splendid charitable institution standing upon ground specially donated by Brigham Young. He advocated the transcontinental railway before the people of the east dreamed of it, and he lived to see it completed and pouring hostile homeseekers into his capital. He urged the construction of telegraph lines, and it was through him that the first postal line was established between the territory which he created and the Atlantic sea- Drawn by Thomas Moran. board. He practised and advocated plural marriages because he wanted his colony to increase. His native wisdom must have told him that the institution could not survive, because, in addition to the outside hostility it invoked, the children of polygamous marriages did not take kindly to the system. It could not be made self-sustaining. It was not until after the Mormons had turned their backs upon Nauvoo, then the second city in size in Illinois-and their temple, which stood second only to the national capital as a structure, that polygamy was openly proclaimed. It was not, indeed, until 1852 that it was avowed as a doctrine of the Church. To Brigham Young, who so ably defended it upon biblical and WATER CAVES AT KANAB, SOUTHERN UTAH. Drawn by Thomas Moran. QUARRYING GRANITE FOR THE TEMPLE: COTTONWOOD CAÑON. 64 The Mormon Church to-day is directed by three presidents-ranking in the order named Wilford Woodruff, George Q. Cannon, and Joseph Smith. The latter is a nephew of the Prophet. Mr. Woodruff, as one of the pioneers of 1846-47, is the essential spirit of the Brigham Young system. He is eighty-seven years of age. When I handed him a newspaper one day, he read the article to which his attention was called without glasses. He has a stern-set face, such, I imagine, as Joshua of old presented, but as an executive he is neither harsh nor inexorable. Old as he is, he seems adjusted to the times and is always accessible during business hours. President Cannon is the practical leader who comes most in contact with the world. His years of life in Washington city, as a representative of the Territory, have given him an extensive acquaintance and knowledge of affairs. He is an orator and a statesman as well as a churchman. President Smith has a thoughtful, introspective air. He is devout and clerical in manner. In a conversation with Presidents Woodruff and Cannon, I was struck by the kindly sentiment which pervaded all their expressions. Reference was had to the persecution of the Saints during the last decade, but no word of bitterness came from them. The mention of Judge McKean's acts did not provoke wrathful spirit, and it may be imagined that in Mormon circles the name of McKean ranks with that of Jeffries in Devonshire. I regret to say that many of the Gentiles in Salt Lake City have not learned so well the lesson of forgiveness. As I have said, the work of building up the Mormon Church is going on vigorously. Material progress is also aimed at. The Mormons of Utah are the most patient and industrious people I have ever seen. The theory of Brigham Young was that the poor of the earth who came to his colony should have lands, and homes, and education, and that their chief happiness should be found in toil. Behold the results of such a policy-churches, schoolhouses, factories, mines, railways, and wealth on every hand. Even to-day there is talk of a railway between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, California, under Mormon auspices. Thus, within the short space of half a century, a great State has sprung up in the land, as it were, before our very eyes. Its fame, with that of its founder's, has become world-wide. The name of Brigham Young as leader, legislator, and ruler, will do down to posterity in the foremost rank, and glorious, indeed, is the legacy he has left behind. He was a man of which any sect and any country might be proud-of the metal from which heroes are made. And the city which he laid out and governed stands to-day, with its silent temple, an eternal monument to the little band which fought its way, with privation and suffering, across a continent. It is seldom given to the founder of a state that the body which he has organized shall grow to such marvelous completeness and maturity within fifty years. Nothing which Brigham Young planned in the self-exiled community of 1847 has failed to reach a well-rounded fulfilment in the modern Utah. While the once-great sect of Quakers in this country is dying out; while the communities of Shakers are passing from sight; while Dunkards are disappearing, Oneida communities and the Brook Farm Association are being forgotten, the great Mormon colony of the west is flourishing and expanding with new influences. It remains to be seen whether it can retain its concrete form and settle itself to new conditions. If so, four states of this Union must for years pass under its social and political domination. |