The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1853-1911, 1853-06-02
The Norm OIls.


every day growing more and more por-
tentous-than which, if we except Afri-
can Slavery, none is more difficult of so.
lution-is rising in the distant West be.
fore the American Government and peo.
pie. Ere long they will have to grapple
with it. Whether it can be peaceably solv-
ed the futu ure alone can tell.
A new territory, carved out of the re-
cent conquests from Mexico, stretching
from the summit 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 in
dignant people, from Ohio, from Missouri,
and Illinois, struggling with cold and
hunger, and encountering the most fear
full hardships and privations, daring the
ferocious savages that dwelt along their
route, and dragging slowly along their
children, goods and domestic implements,
at length make their tedious way to the
home of the Utahs; and having, as they
no doubt supposed, reached the isolated
spot, SO far from all organized society
that they would be free from disturban-
ces for many, many years, they set them
selves down in the valley of the Jordan
in the land of the Honey Bee'-plant
their absurd faith and begin new ma
ton. 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 world, two
hundred and fifty thousand more embrace
the Mormon faith. In this far off will
derness, so recently known only to the
moccasin, the arts are fourishing in a
high degree. Woolen factories, to be
supplied by feeces from the Jordon val
| iley-sugar manufactures, to be fed with
beets-potteries and cutlery establish
ments, send their hum through the aston
ished land. No such noise did it expect
to hear for half a century to come. On
mountain terrace; overhanging the city,
the site of contemplated university is
already laid out and enclosed. School
houses are springing up, and are supplied
with competent teachers from central
Normal School. Gigantic preparations
are in progress to build up a Temple,
which is intended to surpass every exist
ing or historic structure in splendor and
magnitude. The city is laid out on a
scale of magnificent proportions, to which
hitherto, the world has been a stranger
"a scale corresponding with the breadth
of territory on whose bosom they dwell
corresponding with their expectations of
growth, and compared with which the
narrow avenues of modern and ancient
cities, are mere mathematical lines-al-
ready, three miles in breadth and four in
length, its streets are regularly diagram
ed, each eight rods in width, with side
walks of twenty feet-every block forty
rods square, containing eight lots of an a.
ere and quarter each; and every tene-
ment obliged by law to retreat twenty
feet from the front line, to make room for
a 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 ir-
rigation to their bounteous gardens. A
warm spring bubbles from the mountains;
and following pipes, reaches public bath
ing-house. A soil of exuberant produc-
tiveness stretches around them. Compa-
lively little solicitation is necessary from
the hand of man to bring its grains and
fruits to perfection and maturity. Twen-
ty miles to the northwest slumber the
heavy waters of great Salt Lake. This
vast body of the purest brine-so dense
ly impregnated that men cannot sink in
it, if they try-flls basin of thirty by
seventy miles, and will, doubtless, be the
scene of the exhauStless salt manufacture
for those future generations that will in
habit the immense domain between the
Rocky Mountains and the Sea. Already
a United States mail route reaches from
this city to San diego on the Pacific coast,
near which the Salt Lake Mormons have,
thus early, established colony. Other
and outpost settlements are planting a.
round them, on the Weber and the Tim
panagoes. Mormon missionaries are pros
lyting the world, and converging their
convicts to the new city of Utah. The
unconquerable mountains of Wales are
sending their hardy sons to preach and
practice the Mormon creed in the West
ern World And here, between the Rocky
Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, over
eleven hundred miles from the city Of New
York, rapidly grows this incipieDt COM
munity-bound together by a burning
enthusiasm and common faith, compac-
ted by persecutings, welded by the neces-
sity 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 Spalding, when, at
Cherry Valley, in New York. he composed
bis imaginary history called the Manu-
script Found, that it would be seized by
an ignorant and truthless drunkard, pro-
claimed to have been engraved on golden