Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866-7Dilke, Charles Wentworth, Sir
History
Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866-7
Dilke, Charles Wentworth, Sir
Great Britain -- Colonies -- History -- 19th century; United States -- Description and travel; Voyages around the world
The advertisements are in keeping with the news. “Everything, from a
salamander safe to a Limerick fish-hook,” is offered by one firm.
“Fifty-three and a half and three and three-quarter thimble-skein
Schuttler wagons,” is offered by another. An advertiser bids us “Spike
the Guns of Humbug! and Beware of Deleterious Dyes! Refuse to have your
Heads Baptized with Liquid Fire!” Another says, “If you want a paper
free from entanglements of cliques, and antagonistic to the corrupting
evils of factionism, subscribe to the _Montana Radiator_.” Nothing beats
the following: “Butcher‘s dead-shot for bed-bugs! Curls them up as fire
does a leaf! Try it, and sleep in peace! Sold by all live druggists.”
If we turn to the other Salt Lake papers, the _Telegraph_, an
independent Mormon paper, and the _Deseret News_, the official journal
of the church, we find a contrast to the trash of the _Vedette_.
Brigham‘s paper, clearly printed and of a pleasant size, is filled with
the best and latest news from the outlying portions of the Territory,
and from Europe. The motto on its head is a simple one--“Truth and
Liberty;” and twenty-eight columns of solid news are given us. Among the
items is an account of a fight upon the Smoky Hill route, which occurred
on the day we reached this city, and in which two teamsters--George Hill
and Luke West--were killed by the Kiowas and Cheyennes. A loyal Union
article from the pen of Albert Carrington, the editor, is followed by
one upon the natural advantages of Utah, in which the writer complains
that the very men who ridiculed the Mormons for settling in a desert are
now declaiming against their being allowed to squat upon one of the
“most fertile locations in the United States.” The paper asserts that
Mormon success is secured only by Mormon industry, and that as a merely
commercial speculation, apart from the religious impulse, the
cultivation of Utah would not pay: “Utah is no place for the loafer or
the lazy man.” An official report, like the _Court Circular_ of England,
is headed, “President Brigham Young‘s trip North,” and is signed by G.
D. Watt, “Reporter” to the church. The Old Testament is not spared.
“From what we saw of the timbered mountains,” writes one reporter, “we
had no despondency of Israel ever failing for material to build up,
beautify, and adorn pleasant habitations in that part of Zion.” A
theatrical criticism is not wanting, and the church actors come in for
“praise all round.” In another part of the paper are telegraphic reports
from the captains of the seven immigrant trains not yet come in, giving
their position, and details of the number of days’ march for which they
have provisions still in hand. One reports “thirty-eight head of cattle
stolen;” another, “a good deal of mountain fever;” but, on the whole,
the telegrams look well. The editor, speaking of the two English
visitors now in the city, says: “We greet them to our mountain
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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