Red ants and anti-Mormons--Ignorance of the Mormons among Gentiles in Salt Lake City--Mormon reverence for the Bible--Their struggle against drinking-saloons in the city--Conspicuous piety in the settlements--Their charity--Their sobriety (to my great inconvenience)--The literature of Mormonism utterly unreliable--Neglect of the press by the Saints--Explanation of the wide-spread misrepresentation of Mormonism. FROM Orderville (after a short tour in the south-west of the Territory) I returned to Salt Lake City, and during my second sojourn there, over a month, I saw nothing and learned nothing either from Mormon or Gentile to induce me to erase a single word I had written during my previous visit. Indeed, a better acquaintance only strengthened my first favourable opinions of "the Saints of the Rocky Mountains." I was walking one day up the City Creek, when I became aware of an aged man seated on a stone by the roadside. His trousers were turned up to his knees, and he was nursing one of his legs as if he felt a great pity for it. As I approached I perceived that he was in trouble--(I perceived this by his oaths)--and getting still nearer I ventured to inquire what annoyed him. "Aged person," said I, "what aileth thee?"--or words to that effect. But there was no response, at least not worth mentioning. He only bent further over his leg, and I noticed that his coat had split down the back seam. His cursing accounted for that. It was sufficient to make any coat split. And then his hat fell off his head into the dust, in judgment upon him. At this he swore again, horribly. By this time I had guessed that he had been bitten by red ants (and they are the shrewdest reptiles at biting that I know of), so I said, "Bitten by red ants, eh?" At this he exploded with wrath, and looked up. And such a face! He had a countenance on him like the ragged edge of despair. His appearance was a calamity. "Red ants," said he; "red Indians, red devils, red hell!" and then, relapsing into the vernacular, he became unintelligibly profane, but ended up with "this damned Mormon city."