The Mormons: A Discourse Delivered Before the Historical Society of PennsylvaniaKane, Thomas L. (Thomas Leiper)
History
The Mormons: A Discourse Delivered Before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Kane, Thomas L. (Thomas Leiper)
Latter Day Saint churches
It is to these homes, in the heart of our American Alps, like the holy
people of the Grand Saint Bernard, they hold out their welcome to the
passing traveller. Some of you have probably seen in the St. Louis
papers, the repeated votes of thanks to them of companies of emigrants
to California. These are often reduced to great straights after passing
Fort Laramie, and turn aside to seek the Salt Lake Colony in pitiable
plights of fatigue and destitution. The road, after leaving the Oregon
trace, is one of increasing difficulty, and when the last mountain has
been crossed, passes along the bottom of a deep Canyon, whose scenery
is of an almost terrific gloom. It is a defile that I trust no Mormon
Martin Hofer of this Western Tyrol will be called to consecrate to
liberty with blood. At every turn the overhanging cliffs threaten to
break down upon the little torrent river that has worn its way at their
base. Indeed, the narrow ravine is so serrated by this stream, that
the road crosses it from one side to the other, something like forty
times in the last five miles. At the end of the ravine, the emigrant
comes abruptly out of the dark pass into the lighted valley on an even
bench or terrace of its upper table land. No wonder if he loses his
self-control here. A ravishing panoramic landscape opens out below
him, blue, and green, and gold, and pearl; a great sea with hilly
islands, rivers, a lake, and broad sheets of grassy plain, all set, as
in a silver chased cup, within mountains whose peaks of perpetual snow
are burnished by a dazzling sun. It is less these, however, than the
foreground of old-country farms, with their stacks and thatchings and
stock, and the central city, smoking from its chimneys and swarming
with working inhabitants, that tries the men of fatigue broken nerves.
The 'Californeys' scream, they sing, they give three cheers, and do not
count them, a few have prayed; more swear, some fall on their faces and
cry outright. News arrived a few days since from a poor townsman of
ours, a journeyman saddler, that used to work up Market street beyond
Broad, by name Gillian, who sought the valley, his cattle given out,
and himself broken down and half heart-broken:--The recluse Mormons
fed and housed him and his party, and he made his way through to the
gold diggings with restored health and strength. To Gillian's credit
for manhood, should perhaps be cited his own allegation, that he first
whistled through his fingers various popular nocturnal, street, circus,
and theatre calls; but it is certain that, when my tidings speak of
him, which was when he was afterwards hospitably entreated by a Mormon,
whom he knew ten years ago as one of our Chester County farmers, he was
completely dissolved into something not far from the hysterics, and
wept on till the tears ran down his dusty beard.
Several hundred emigrants, in more or less distress, received
gratuitous assistance last year from the Mormons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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