Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1850-1854, 1853-04-29
THE M0RM0NS.

THE MORMONs.
A problem Of singular difficulty, and every
day growing more and more portentious-
than which, if We except African Slavery
none is more difficult of solutions rising
in the distant West, before the American
Government and people. Ere long they will
have to grapple with it. Whether it can be
peacefully solved, the future alone can tell
A new Territory, carved out Of the recent
conquests from Mexico stretches from the sum-
NIT of the Rocky Mountains on the East
through thirteen degrees of longitude, to the
land of gold. A branch of the Indian family
the Pah- Utahs-roamed its prairies and
claimed it as their own. But new tribe
and sect-driven from State to State, fleeing
before an indignant people, from Ohio, from
Missouri and Illinois, struggling with cold and
hunger, and encountering the most fearful
hardships and privations, daring the ferociou:
savages that dwell along the route, and drag.
ing slowly along their children, goods and
domestic implements, at length make then
tedious way to the home of the Utahs; and
having as they no doubt suppose, reached an
isolated spot SO far from all organized society
that they would be free from disturbance 70,
many, many years, they set themselves down
in the valley of the Jordan--in the "land OF
the Honey Bee"-plant their absurd faith
and begin new nation. Some six years
have since elapsed, and the census of the
Great Salt Lake City probably enumerates, at
this day, some forty or fifty thousand people
while in other parts of the warld, two hun
bred and fifty thousand more embrace the
Mormon faith.
In that far-of wilderness, so recently known
only to the moccasin, the arts are tlourishing
in high degree. Wooden factories, to be
supplied by fieeces from the Jordan valley
sugar manufactures, to be fed with bets
potteries and cutlery establishments, send
their hum through the astonished land. No
such noise did it expect to hear for half a
century to come. On mountain terrace,
overhanging the city, the site of contem-
plated university is already laid out and en-
closed. School houses are springing up,
and are supplied with competent teachers
from central Normal School. Gigantic
preparations are in progress to build a Tenn
pie, which is intended to surpass every exist
ing or historic structure in splendor and mag
nitude. The city is laid out on scale of
magnificent proportions, to which, hitherto,
the world has been a stranger-a scale cores
ponding with the breadth of territory on
whose bosom they dwell-eorresponding with
their expectations of growth, and compared
with which the narrow avenues of modern
and ancient cities, are but mere mathemat-
ical lines-already, three miles in breadth
and four in length, its streets are regularly
diagramed, each eight rods wide, with side
walks of 20 feet-eyery block 40 rods square
containing eight lots of an acre and quar-
ter each, and every tenement obliged by law
to retreat 90 feet from the front line, to make
room for delightful margin of shrubbery
and trees A perennial stream flows through
the city, and pours its pure waters down both
sides of every street, and carries irrigation to
their bounteous gardens. A warm spring
bub bles from the mountains, and following
the pipes, reaches a public bathing house.
A soil of exuberant productiveness stretches
round them. Comparatively little solicita-
ton is necessary from the hand of man to
bring its grains and fruits to perfection and
maturity. Twenty miles to the northwest,
slumber the heavy waters of the Great Salt
Lake. This vast body of the purest brine
so densely imprcgnated that men cannot sink
in it, if they try-fiils basin of 80 by 20
miles, and will doubtless, be the scene of the
exhaustless salt manufacture for those future
generations that will inhabit the immense
domain between the Rocky Mountains and
the sea.
Already United States mail route reach
es from this city to San Diego on the Paci-
fc coast, near which the Salt Lake Mormons
have, thus early, established colony. Other
and outpost settlements are planting around
them, OH the Weber and the Timpanagos.
Mormon missionaries are proselyting the
world, and converging the converts to the new
City of Utah. The unconquerable noun
tains of Wales are sending their hardy sons
to preach and practice the Mormon creed in
the Western World. And here, between the
Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada,
over eleven hundred miles from San Fran
cisco, and about two thousand four hundred
miles from the City of New York, rapidly
grows this incipient community-bound to-
gether by burning enthusiasm and common
faith, compacted by prosecutions, welded by
the necessity of self-support and self-defence,
its founder sot and its Bible theft
one of the strangest phenomena TO which
the present, or any age, has given birth.
How far was it from the thoughts of the
minister, SOLOMON SPALDIEG, when, at Cher
~ Valley, in this State, he composed his i'm
aginary history called the Manuscript found,