The Sun.
London, England, 1870-01-05 00:00:00

It naturally attracts all the goods of Santa Fe, and
large stores of Mexican wool find their way to the
terminus. At Santa Fe .sheep farming is conducted
on an extensive scale, some flocks numbering
50,000 head; and a vast influx of these sheep now
takes place to the settlements along the line, but
oxen will for many years to come constitute the
chief wealth of Kansas. It is expected that for the"
next 50 years the cheap beef of America will be pro-
duced on the buffalo range, and 70,000 head of
cattle will this year, it is believed, be carried west
by the company from the single station of Ellsworth.
A three-year-old Texas steer sells for about $3O,
and the estimated cost of raising them in Kansas is
from $5 to $lO. While railways are in course of
construction, which must constantly be the case in
new fertile districts rapidly being peopled, there is
plenty of work, but not of the class which honest
labourers woul.l like, at least at the head works of
the line as it proceeds. Sheridan is now what
Cheyenne on the other Pacific Road was a year ago
—a nest of iniquity. It consists of two rows of
houses, each facing the track, which runs between.
Some of them are stores 150 feet long, containing
immense masses of goods awaiting transport.
There are a few hotels and buildings of all sorts
belonging to the railroad, but the rest, some .50, are
saloons and gambling establishments. Fiddles and
accordions, billiards and roulette, songs, the jingle
of glasses,• and now and then the report of
a pistol, are the most familiar sounds. A
Vigilance Committee has been organised, and many
ruffians summarily hanged. Its members wait at.
midnight on the criminal, who awakes with armed
and: masked men around his bed ; he has to get
up and dress, noise or resistance meetingimmediately
with a bullet through the brain. When a retired
spot. is reached, some inquiry into the facts is gene-
rally made, sentence pronounced, and instantly
and sternly executed. Sometimes the criminal is
permitted to leave the place on giving information
about his companions and their objects. Some dis-
tance beyond Sheridan, the main road to Denver,
now in process of formation, branches through New
Mexico- to Santa Fe, and this is the line to the
Pacific. Denver is the chief city of Colorado, at
the foot of the Rocky Mountains, where they rise
like a wall to the north and to the south, and the
Pacific Railroad from that spot turns from its
westward track, almost due north, till it intersects
the Union Pacific Railroad, at Cheyenne, where it,
enters the mountains. There we come again into
the line of emigration, whose proper centre is
Omaha, and we get into a country in every way
inferior. A Tribune correspondent thus writes of
Salina, a town a short distance west of Solomon.
" Salina is a town of 1,500 inhabitants, 184 miles
west of the Missouri River. A Fair of the County
Agricultural Society was just commenced, and I
took great pleasure in attending it, for I had not
the least idea that in such a remote place so much
progress would be manifest. The show of vegetables
was fully as good as in any part of the East, and
I never saw larger turnips or sweet potatoes.
Water melons were uncommonly large, and I was
told that a lot of 100 sold in town the average was.
38 pounds. Wheat and corn were unexcelled, and.
a sample of Surprise oats weighed 41 pounds to
the bushel. In animals the display was good, and
in short, the whole exhibition would have honoured
any county in New York or Ohio. Let me speak
of the wheat crop grswn near Salina. They as-
sured me that the average was 25 bushels to the
acre, while whole fields averaged over 40 bushels.
Judge Hamilton drove me through the valley, and
I saw immense stacks of wheat taken from wha'
seemed small pieces of ground. Thra,hers get 8
cents a bushel for thrashing, and tniilers 30 cents
a bushel for grinding. It was clear that good
merchant mills are needed. Spring wheat was sell-
ing at about 80 cents, and Winter wheat for $1 25
to $1 50 a bushel ; flour, $5 per cwt. Sweet po'a-
toes, $1 a bushel; Irish, 60 cents; butter, 30 cents :
eggs the same. Very few hogs in the csunty, and
sheep are rare. Beef mostly is eaten, and the best
quality sells at 12 cents a pound."

THE MORMON CHURCH.

(From the Anglo-American Times.)

Lord Amberley may be followed as an impartial
guide in discussing the tenets of the " Latter-Day
Saints," and his account in the Fortnightly Review
to which we lately alluded, is full of interest.
Very little is known of the new revelations claimed
I for Mormonism, as the world in general throw them
aside as an impudent imposture, as unworthy of seri-
ous notice as are the Jumpers, or the dwellers.in the
Agapemone. A consideration of what the followers
of Joseph Smith have achieved disabuses us of such
an error, and Mormonism is thus rendered of inte-
rest, while politically for some time it has furnished
an important subject for discussion in the United
States. Professedly the Government is Republican.
ble in reality the-ie polity is a theocratic despo:
Brigham Young, like the other high otlicia!s, goes
through the form of being re-elected twice a year—
hut who dare oppose men inspired by Heaven ?
Much interest must be felt in the writings left by
the founder of the sect and the Commentators and
Fathers of the Church. Lord Amberley says :
" Ihe Book of Mormon is a small volume in its ex-
ternal ivpcct, resembling a cheap edition of the
Bible, containing 563 closely trinted pages, and
did.ded into fourteen books. It contains the his-
tory of threw distinct emigrations from Palestine to
America. The work begins with that of Lehi, whi,
left Jerusalem in the reign of Zedekiah, King of
Judah, with his four sons." One of these became
the ancestor of the Nephites, another of the Lama-
nites ; two great nations, whose wars, as related
in the Book of Mormon, occupy a large portion of
the narrative. The Laniantes are the American

Indians, who are, therefore, of Jewish origin. Such
was the gravity of the sins and offences committed
by Nephi's brethren that, "as they were ex-
ceeding fair and delightsome, that they might not
be enticing unto my (Nephi's) people, the
Lord did cause a skin of blackness to come upon
them." Hence, ever after this, the Lamauites were
distinguished by their colour. Another colony was
discovered at some period between B.C. 200 and 100,
and it was found that its inhabitants also were

Jews, who had emigrated to
America when Zede-
kiah was taken captive to Babylon, some years after
the Nephites. The great object to which the ex-
hortations of all the Nephite prophets, who were
very numerous, were directed, is the future coming
of Christ. This is the culminating event of the
Book of Mormon, and it is predicted in the most
unmistakeable terms, the name and parentage of
Jesus being expressly mentioned. Had the lan-
guage of the Hebrew prophets been equally dis-
tinct, it would have saved all controversy about
Mesdanic prophecies. Christ appeared to the Ne-
phites after the Crucifixion, and his pre:whiff, con-
sisted of a repetition in a great measure of his dis-
courses in Palestine, a few special injunctions being
added. But the oldest emigration of all remained
unknown until Moroni, a Nephite prophet (about
A.D. 400), discovered 24 plates, giving an account of
a nation who had emigrated to America soon after
the confusion of tongues. Their journey across the
ocean occupied 344 days. After living for many
generations in what is called the North country,
probably North America, they were destroyed by
God on account of their wickedness. A similar
fate awaited the Nephites. Their iniquity became
so great that God was obliged to get rid of them,
and they were exterminated by the Lamanites in
the battle of Cumorah. Mormon, who lived in the
fourth century after Christ, made an abridgment of
the original plates of the Nephites, from the time
that Lehi left Jerusalem to his own day, and
continued the record by adding a narrative
of the things which he himself had witnessed.
Just before the battle of Cumorah, foreseeing
that this would be the last struggle of his
people, he. hid the plates in the hill in order to save
them from falling into the hands of the Lamanites,
but he gave a few plates to his son, Moroni, who
finished the record of his father. Moroni, the
son
of Mormon, was the last surviving Nephite, and
it is he who describes the battle at Cumorah. After
a wretched life, wandering from place to place to
escape the Lamanites, he finally buried the plates
in the hill (A.D. 421) and sealed them up, where
they remained until their removal by ,the prophet
Joseph in the year 1827. The interest centres in
the matters relating to this history, but, as a whole,
the Book of Mormon is dry to a painful degree.
There is a book of doctrine and covenants embody-
ing the plans and resolutions of each month and
year. Another, called " The Pearl of Great Price,"
purports to relate legends from an ancient scroll
written by Moses in Egypt about himself and
Abraham. In the Pearl there appears this curious
prophecy revealed to Smith on the Christmas-day of
1832, while the book was published by himself in
1851—

ta that
"Verily, thus saith the Lol:dicolineerininzt berd Wars
will shortly come to p 155, bgirn,r tt the rebellion
nof
South Carolina, which will eventually ternt'uate in the
death and misery of many souls. The day win come that
w..r will be poured out upon all nations, b .giutiing at that
place ; for h, hold the CuS horn Stabs sl.alt be divided
aping the Northern States, and the Southern States will
call on other nations, even OA) nation of Great Britain, as
it is called, and they shall also call on other nations in
order to defend themselves against eller nations, and
thus war shall be
ny
poured out upon all nations. And it
shall come to pass after ma
days slaves shall rise up
against their mastf:rs, who shalt be marshalled and
disciplined for war."

Adallision to this Church is by imposition of hands
and by baptism (initnersion), to which great im-
portance is attached. The dead can derive the
benefit through the baptism of the living relative or
friend, a practice jn-titied by 1 Cor. xv. 29. rile
Bible is considered the standard and test of truth,
coustrued'in its most literal meaning. It is on pas-
sages of the Scriptures that the Mormons ground