The Kanzas news., 1858-10-09
From utalA

A correspondent Of the n. z. Tribune
writing from Salt Lake City. August 90.
says:
Wander through the streets of this city
with friend who is familiar with the pop
ulation, snd yon viii not meet girl on the
verge of womanhood. but who, be will tell
you, is married to somebody old enough to
be her father. This very day have seen
at least ten, the Oldest not eighteen, most of
them carrying little babies in their arms.
It is the policy of the church to force wo-
men into matrimony at the earliest possible
age, on the principle that the more children
. person raises to the Lord, the greater
will be his glory in the Celestial Kingdom.
The fate of girl bern here, of Mormon
parents humble in the ecclesiastical scale,
is the most melancholy can imagine, al
though even to her father and mother it
may and often does, appear happy and hon
orable. Accustomed from her cradle 70
sights and sounds calculated to give her
precoeious development in some respects,
she natures rapidly. and desires marriage at
fifteen or sixteen, or even earlier. She
looks around for husband, and realizes that
if she maFries young man of her own So
cid grade, and becomes his first wife, IN
course of time other wives will likely be
associated with her. She concludes there
fore, that it is as well for herself (if she can
get the chance to become spiritual OF q
Bishop, or Presiding Elder, or Presi-
dent of Stake with perhaps half a dozen
wives already, rich. capable OF feeding his
family well and clothing them decentiy. So
she plunges into polygamy at once.
so far as can Judge from my own OBJ
servations, and from the testimony of both
Mormons and Gentiles, nearly one half of
the people are English and Welsh, and at
least two thirds foreigners. In the best
huilt and thickest settled portion of the city,
that adjoining Temple square, the business
part of the main street, and Brigham 8 and
Hebet's c0rrals, there are few residents who
are not Americans But in the streets on
the outskirts an American Is rarely to be
found One quarter of the city, the south
eastern, is occupied almost wholly by Danes.
The proportion of Americans is also surely
greater here than in any town III the Terri
tory There are some stakes in the valley
whose inhabitants are all foreigners.
81 have made repeated endeayors 10 form
an. intelligent judgment of the population of
Salt Lake City before the late emigration,
but have been unable 70 do so. The esti
mates of persons who have lived in the Ter
ritory for many years, and have been in
quisitive and observant, differ as much as
5000. But by no estimate which / have
obtained did the population exceed 1900
or fall short of $500. It is probably now
less than two thirds what it was last July.
Some of the streets on the outskirts are en-
tirely untenanted, the houses unmantled, and
the gardens choked with weeds. Their for
mer occupants will probably never return.
If monogamy prevailed, the population
could be readily ascertained by computing
the number of houses, and assigning to each
that number of occupants which is the av-
erage in the large frontier towns of Iowa
and Missouri But the existence of polyg-
amy renders such computation impractica-
BILE. have been pointed to three houses,
each little adobe, one-storied. with only
Two or three rooms, which am assured are
tenanted by families. numbering from two
to four wives and seven to twelve children"