While in Salt Lake City the Captain renewed his acquaintance with Brigham Young and other Mormons whom he had known on the Missouri. An old friend of his of the name of Hooper, who had turned Mormon, and later became a delegate from the Territory to Congress, called as soon as he heard that La Barge was in town. He also found there another friend, Hopkins by name, whom he had known from boyhood. Hopkins tried his best to induce La Barge to join the Mormons. He assured the Captain that if he would sell out in St. Louis and come to Utah it would be his fortune. As proof of this, he referred to himself and others, who, he said, had gone into Mormonism, not for any love of the doctrine, but as a simple business proposition. Hooper and Hopkins had both been unsuccessful in St. Louis. La Barge had taken them up on his boat to Fort Kearney, about 1852, and had always esteemed them good men. He asked the wife of one of them one day why her husband had never married again, since the doctrine of the Church and the sentiment of the community sanctioned it. “He doesn’t dare to; he knows _I_ would leave him if he did,” she replied. [Sidenote: DIGNITARIES OF THE MORMON CHURCH.] The Captain called on Young several times. That dignitary received him very hospitably, took him to the Tabernacle and other places of interest, and presented him to several of his families. They went to the theater together, where they sat in a box with Young’s favorite wife, the other wives being ranged in seats below. Young never said anything intended to convert La Barge to his religion. Other members of the Church did, and particularly Orson Hyde, who was a man of education and a very persuasive talker. La Barge heard a sermon by Heber Kimball--a rough old fellow who took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and waded in. His language was coarse and vulgar, and would not bear repetition in refined ears. The route of the Captain’s party, on leaving Salt Lake City, was through Weber Cañon to Fort Bridger. They stopped there a short time with Captain Carter, who, for many years, did business at that frontier post. From there they made their way east, and left the mountain country _via_ the valley of the Cache à la Poudre River. In the valley of the South Platte they met an old man of the name of Geary, who told them that a band of hostile Indians was scouring the country between them and Denver, and that they had better conceal themselves for a few days on an island in the Platte River. They acted upon this advice, and when they judged the danger to be past they resumed their journey. They had gone but a little way when they came to a spot where a party of emigrants had been massacred only a day or two before. Their timely measure of precaution was therefore well taken. [Sidenote: A LONG VOYAGE.]