The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1911-06-15

| many connections between ana tnat
this accounts for the vexatious fire.
quency with which Mormon residents
wanted by indignant neighbors for
chicken and horse stealing walked
placidly into their homes and disap-
! peared from the face of the earth
until the hue and cry was over. But
this is a vexed and unsettled ques-
ton.
Close to the old mansion house is
the white stone foundation of new
and splendid mansion house which
was to have been built. But Nauvoo
vanished before it was completed. In
all the several square miles of old
Nauvoo not fifty houses remain. They
are occupied many of them by de-
scendants of the original inha bitants
who talk readily and with most
wonderful variation of statement.
For that matter, however, the whole
surrounding country reeks with Nor
mon tales many wild and improbable,
many undoubtedly true and none the
less wierd. OF the temple, no vestige
remains save the stones which were
torn from the site by later settlers and
built into other buildings. Pictures
of it are crude and unsatisfactory,
save those of the old German artist
wnom | mentioned in another letter
These show vividly its strange design
and also the process of its decay.
Burned in the fifties the huge facade
IL
ally and often attacked by builders
who wanted stone. On the site of the
temple the Reimbold family for many
years conducted a store and kept a
register of visitors. This register con-
tains many great names and many
names of old Mormon citizens who,
returning to their desecrated city
made the site their wailing place and
cried out against the Gentle in this
old book.
This was the first Nauvoo The
ones which followed are hardly less
interesting. To the site after the Nor
mons had fed came Pere CADET in the
late forties from France with a plan
to found a city containing 100000 of
the artists, poets, artisans and think
ers of France. The Icarian colony
which he founded fiourished for many
out of stones from the Mormon temple
The lonely hills We're covered with
vineyards and Nauvoo rose to new
glory But the colony suffered the
fate of most communistic towns
There was scism and desertion and
in the next generation the 1carian
colony disappeared But many of the
known ST Louis French and many a
fine old family in the valley around
are of Icarian descent.
When the Icarians vanished the
Germans came-Germans from the
Rhine valley. They too, knew how to
grow grapes On the steep hillsides and
their vineyards and orchards became
famous. Many of them are left and
Nauvoo is now the center of the great
est grape growing center of this
state. There is many wine cellar
in the hills and the spraying wagons,
dripping green with poison are COM
mon vehicles met on Nauvoo streets.
Still another colony has taken root
in Nauyoo and is now fiourishing On
the hill near where the old temple
stood are two great Catholic schools,
one for girls and one for boys. The
latter is new and its red walls and
green roof rising from among the
vineyards can be seen for miles. he
new Nauvoo, high on the hills, is a
shady, quaint little town but full OF
/ business and endowed with cement
walks, newspapers and hustle. The
visitor eats his dinner in quaint
old hotel, rests in the shady yard sur
! rounded by grotesque Mormon cary
/ ings and when it is steamer time al
I automobile carries him down to the
4 landing. And If he is like me he reg
| listers vow to come again to this
foreign land whose ocean separating
I it from the new world is merely the
rolling Mississippi