Visions.--If that strange people who built Nauvoo and Salt Lake, who uncomplainingly toiled across the American Desert and made the wilderness of Utah bloom like a garden, had been permitted to remain and perfect the work which they had begun here, how different would have been the history of Far West. Instead of being a farm with scarcely sufficient ruins to mark the spot where it once stood, there would have been a rich populous city, along the streets of which would be pouring the wealth of the world, and instead of an old dilapidated farm house there would have been magnificent temples, to which devout Saints from the farthest corners of the world would have made their yearly pilgrimages. But the bigotry and intolerance of the Saints toward the Gentiles and especially toward dissenters from the new revelations of Joe Smith, rendered such a consummation impossible. APPENDIX V. "MORMON" DIFFICULTIES. (_History of Missouri, Union Historical Society,_ 1881.) In 1832, Joseph smith, the leader of the "Mormons," and the chosen prophet and apostle, as he claimed, of the Most High, came with many followers to Jackson County, Missouri, where they located and entered several thousand acres of land. The object of his coming so far west--upon the very outskirts of civilization at that time--was to more securely establish his Church, and the more effectively to instruct his followers in its peculiar tenets and practices. Upon the present town site of Independence the "Mormons" located their "Zion," and gave it the name of "New Jerusalem." They published here _The Evening Star,_ and made themselves generally obnoxious to the Gentiles who were then in a minority, by their denunciatory articles through their paper, their clannishness and their polygamous practices.[A] [Footnote A: Although the work from which the above record is quoted is quite a pretentious history consisting of 1006 pages, yet it apparently has no regard for consistency of statement, for while it is said on page 47, that this Church (of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--"Mormon") made themselves generally obnoxious by their polygamous practices, on page 269 the following occurs, speaking of the difference between the so-called Josephite Church, who now have a congregation and church building in Independence, Mo., and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: "This church, * * * (i. e., Josephite Church,) has kept an active ministry at work in Utah, endeavoring to disabuse the 'Mormons' of that Territory of the dogma of polygamy, which they assert to be no part of primitive Mormonism; and from the history of the sect during its stay in Missouri from 1835 to 1838, it would appear that these organizers are correct; for not a single charge of such dogma being held or taught appears in the many statements made against them, or in the published orders and reports of the officers engaged in expelling them from the State."]