I had early been familiar with Utah and its mines, through an acquaintance with “Sam” Brannan. Brannan had a history of thrills and adventures which if gathered into book form would make the heroes of Dumas look cheap and commonplace. Originally a Mormon, high in the councils of Brigham Young, he led a body of his co-religionists around Cape Horn to California, before the earliest Argonauts. He staked out claims on the American River, about two miles from where Folsom prison stands, the location being known as “Mormon Island” to this day. The diggings were so rich that one of California’s evanescent cities sprang up around it, almost overnight, just as suddenly to disappear. “Sam” worked his companions on a per diem basis and very soon accumulated a large fortune--certainly in excess of a million dollars, many well informed people estimating it at two or three times as much. But while he settled promptly his labor bills, he was not so businesslike in squaring accounts with the Mormon Church, which claimed nearly all the profits. Finally, a trusted agent was dispatched from Salt Lake City with a peremptory order on Brannan to turn over the ecclesiastical share of the “dust” at once. Brannan’s reply was historic and to the point, even if a bit profane. The gold, he said, had been placed in his safe keeping on the Lord’s account. He would surrender it upon the Lord’s proper written order; otherwise not. “Sam” invested most of his wealth in San Francisco real estate. An important street bears his name. Like most of the early Mormon leaders, he was of a coarse-fibered nature, with a rather forbidding, saturnine face, but singularly keen-witted, resolute, and fearing neither man nor devil. The latter quality stood him in good stead. Brigham could not permit such a flagrant breach of church discipline to remain unpunished. Flock after flock of “destroying angels” took flight from Salt Lake City, duly commissioned to bring back Samuel’s scalp or perish in the attempt. But their holy work was always a dismal failure. Brannan must have had some foreknowledge of their movement against the security of his person. Liking not to meet “angels” unawares of any kind, he arranged to encounter the “destroyers” half way out in the trackless desert, or mountain fastnesses, with a competent group of exterminators he seemed to keep on hand for such occasions; and it was the “angels” who were always taken unawares. Some of them got back to Salt Lake minus tail feathers and otherwise damaged, but the majority of them never returned at all. At last, the disciplining of Brannan became so manifestly an extra-hazardous risk that it was finally abandoned. How he defied the whole power of Mormonism and actually conducted a private and successful war against the church was one of the old romances of the Pacific Coast. In later years Brannan fell a victim to drink, all his enormous wealth became dissipated and he died penniless and forgotten in Mexico.