the john muir exhibit - writings - steep_trails - chapter 6
Chapter 6
The City of the Saints
8
The mountains rise grandly round about this curious city, the Zion of
the new Saints, so grandly that the city itself is hardly visible.
The Wahsatch Range, snow-laden and adorned with glacier-sculpted
peaks, stretches continuously along the eastern horizon, forming the
boundary of the Great Salt Lake Basin; while across the valley of the
Jordan southwestward from here, you behold the Oquirrh Range, about as
snowy and lofty as the Wahsatch. To the northwest your eye skims the
blue levels of the great lake, out of the midst of which rise island
mountains, and beyond, at a distance of fifty miles, is seen the
picturesque wall of the lakeside mountains blending with the lake and
the sky.
The glacial developments of these superb ranges are sharply sculptured
peaks and crests, with ample wombs between them where the ancient
snows of the glacial period were collected and transformed into ice,
and ranks of profound shadowy canyons, while moraines commensurate
with the lofty fountains extend into the valleys, forming far the
grandest series of glacial monuments I have yet seen this side of the
Sierra.
In beginning this letter I meant to describe the city, but in the
company of these noble old mountains, it is not easy to bend one's
attention upon anything else. Salt Lake cannot be called a very
beautiful town, neither is there anything ugly or repulsive about it.
From the slopes of the Wahsatch foothills, or old lake benches, toward
Fort Douglas it is seen to occupy the sloping gravelly delta of City
Creek, a fine, hearty stream that comes pouring from the snows of the
mountains through a majestic glacial canyon; and it is just where this
stream comes forth into the light on the edge of the valley of the
Jordan that the Mormons have built their new Jerusalem.
At first sight there is nothing very marked in the external appearance
of the town excepting its leafiness. Most of the houses are veiled
with trees, as if set down in the midst of one grand orchard; and seen
at a little distance they appear like a field of glacier boulders
overgrown with aspens, such as one often meets in the upper valleys of
the California Sierra, for only the angular roofs are clearly visible.
Perhaps nineteen twentieths of the houses are built of bluish-gray
adobe bricks, and are only one or two stories high, forming fine
cottage homes which promise simple comfort within. They are set well
back from the street, leaving room for a flower garden, while almost
every one has a thrifty orchard at the sides and around the back. The
gardens are laid out with great simplicity, indicating love for
flowers by people comparatively poor, rather than deliberate efforts
of the rich for showy artistic effects. They are like the pet gardens
of children, about as artless and humble, and harmonize with the low
dwellings to which they belong. In almost every one you find daisies,
and mint, and lilac bushes, and rows of plain English tulips. Lilacs
and tulips are the most characteristic flowers, and nowhere have I
seen them in greater perfection. As Oakland is pre-eminently a city
of roses, so is this Mormon Saints' Rest a city of lilacs and tulips.
The flowers, at least, are saintly, and they are surely loved. Scarce
a home, however obscure, is without them, and the simple,
unostentatious manner in which they are planted and gathered in pots
and boxes about the windows shows how truly they are prized.
The surrounding commons, the marshy levels of the Jordan, and dry,
gravelly lake benches on the slopes of the Wahsatch foothills are now
gay with wild flowers, chief among which are a species of phlox, with
an abundance of rich pink corollas, growing among sagebrush in showy
tufts, and a beautiful papilionaceous plant, with silky leaves and
large clusters of purple flowers, banner, wings, and keel exquisitely
shaded, a mertensia, hydrophyllum, white boragewort, orthocarpus,
several species of violets, and a tall scarlet gilia. It is
delightful to see how eagerly all these are sought after by the
children, both boys and girls. Every day that I have gone botanizing
I have met groups of little Latter-Days with their precious bouquets,
and at such times it was hard to believe the dark, bloody passages of
Mormon history.
But to return to the city. As soon as City Creek approaches its upper
limit its waters are drawn off right and left, and distributed in
brisk rills, one on each side of every street, the regular slopes of
the delta upon which the city is built being admirable adapted to this
system of street irrigation. These streams are all pure and sparkling
in the upper streets, but, as they are used to some extent as sewers,
they soon manifest the consequence of contact with civilization,
though the speed of their flow prevents their becoming offensive, and
little Saints not over particular may be seen drinking from them
everywhere.
The streets are remarkably wide and the buildings low, making them
appear yet wider than they really are. Trees are planted along the
sidewalks -- elms, poplars, maples, and a few catalpas and hawthorns;
yet they are mostly small and irregular, and nowhere form avenues half
so leafy and imposing as one would be led to expect. Even in the
business streets there is but little regularity in the buildings -- now
a row of plain adobe structures, half store, half dwelling, then a
high mercantile block of red brick or sandstone, and again a row of
adobe cottages nestled back among apple trees. There is one immense
store with its sign upon the roof, in letters big enough to be read
miles away, "Z.C.M.I." (Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution),
while many a small, codfishy corner grocery bears the legend "Holiness
to the Lord, Z.C.M.I." But little evidence will you find in this
Zion, with its fifteen thousand souls, of great wealth, though many a
Saint is seeking it as keenly as any Yankee Gentile. But on the other
had, searching throughout all the city, you will not find any trace of
squalor or extreme poverty.
Most of the women I have chanced to meet, especially those from the
country, have a weary, repressed look, as if for the sake of their
religion they were patiently carrying burdens heavier than they were
well able to bear. But, strange as it must seem to Gentiles, the many
wives of one man, instead of being repelled from one another by
jealousy, appear to be drawn all the closer together, as if the real
marriage existed between the wives only. Groups of half a dozen or so
may frequently be seen on the streets in close conversation, looking
as innocent and unspeculative as a lot of heifers, while the masculine
Saints pass them by as if they belonged to a distinct species. In the
Tabernacle last Sunday, one of the elders of the church, in
discoursing upon the good things of life, the possessions of Latter-Day Saints, enumerated fruitful fields, horses, cows, wives, and
implements, the wives being placed as above, between the cows and
implements, without receiving any superior emphasis.
Polygamy, as far as I have observed, exerts a more degrading influence
upon husbands that upon wives. The love of the latter finds
expression in flowers and children, while the former seem to be
rendered incapable of pure love of anything. The spirit of Mormonism
is intensely exclusive and un-American. A more withdrawn, compact,
sealed-up body of people could hardly be found on the face of the
earth than is gathered here, notwithstanding railroads, telegraphs,
and the penetrating lights that go sifting through society everywhere
in this revolutionary, question-asking century. Most of the Mormons I
have met seem to be in a state of perpetual apology, which can hardly
be fully accounted for by Gentile attacks. At any rate it is
unspeakable offensive to any free man.
"We Saints," they are continually saying, "are not as bad as we are
called. We don't murder those who differ with us, but rather treat
them with all charity. You may go through our town night or day and
no harm shall befall you. Go into our houses and you will be well
used. We are as glad as you are that Lee was punished," etc. While
taking a saunter the other evening we were overtaken by a
characteristic Mormon, "an umble man," who made us a very deferential
salute and then walked on with us about half a mile. We discussed
whatsoever of Mormon doctrines came to mind with American freedom,
which he defended as best he could, speaking in an excited but
deprecating tone. When hard pressed he would say: "I don't understand
these deep things, but the elders do. I'm only an umble tradesman."
In taking leave he thanked us for the pleasure of our querulous
conversation, removed his hat, and bowed lowly in a sort of Uriah Heep
manner, and then went to his humble home. How many humble wives it
contained, we did not learn.
Fine specimens of manhood are by no means wanting, but the number of
people one meets here who have some physical defect or who attract
one's attention by some mental peculiarity that manifests itself
through the eyes, is astonishingly great in so small a city. It would
evidently be unfair to attribute these defects to Mormonism, though
Mormonism has undoubtedly been the magnet that elected and drew these
strange people together from all parts of the world.
But however "the peculiar doctrines" and "peculiar practices" of
Mormonism have affected the bodies and the minds of the old Saints,
the little Latter-Day boys and girls are as happy and natural as
possible, running wild, with plenty of good hearty parental
indulgence, playing, fighting, gathering flowers in delightful
innocence; and when we consider that most of the parents have been
drawn from the thickly settled portion of the Old World, where they
have long suffered the repression of hunger and hard toil, the Mormon
children, "Utah's best crop," seem remarkably bright and promising.
From children one passes naturally into the blooming wilderness, to
the pure religion of sunshine and snow, where all the good and the
evil of this strange people lifts and vanishes from the mind like mist
from the mountains.
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