At 6 30 P.M. we debouched upon the bank of the Green River. The station was the home of Mr. Macarthy, our driver. The son of a Scotchman who had settled in the United States, he retained many signs of his origin, especially freckles, and hair which one might almost venture to describe as sandy; perhaps also, at times, he was rather o'er fond of draining "a cup o' kindness yet." He had lately taken to himself an English wife, the daughter of a Birmingham mechanic, who, before the end of her pilgrimage to "Zion on the tops of the mountains," had fallen considerably away from grace, and had incurred the risk of being buffeted by Satan for a thousand years—a common form of commination in the New Faith—by marrying a Gentile husband.[1] The station had the indescribable scent of a Hindoo village, which appears to result from the burning of bois de vache and the presence of cattle: there were sheep, horses, mules, and a few cows, the latter so lively that it was impossible to milk them. The ground about had the effect of an oasis in the sterile waste, with grass and shrubs, willows and flowers, wild geraniums, asters, and various cruciferæ. A few trees, chiefly quaking asp, lingered near the station, but dead stumps were far more numerous than live trunks. In any other country their rare and precious shade would have endeared them to the whole settlement; here they were never safe when a log was wanted. The Western man is bred and perhaps born—I believe devoutly in transmitted and hereditary qualities—with an instinctive dishlike to timber in general. He fells a tree naturally as a bull-terrier worries a cat, and the admirable woodsman's axe which he has invented only serves to whet his desire to try conclusions with every more venerable patriarch of the forest.[2] Civilized Americans, of course, lament the destructive mania, and the Latter-Day Saints have learned by hard experience the inveterate evils that may arise in such a country from disforesting the ground. We supped comfortably at Green-River Station, the stream supplying excellent salmon trout. The kichimichi, or buffalo berry,[3] makes tolerable jelly, and alongside of the station is a store where Mr. Burton (of Maine) sells "Valley Tan" whisky.[4]
- ↑ Mr. Brigham Young, one of the most tolerant of a people whose motto is toleration, would not, I believe, offer any but an official objection to a Mormon member marrying a worthy Gentile; but even he—and it could hardly be expected that he should—can not overlook the sin of apostasy. The order of the faith runs thus: "We believe that it is not right to prohibit members of the Church from marrying out of the Church, if it be their determination so to do, but such persons will be considered weak in the faith of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." The same view of the subject is taken, I need hardly say, by the more rigid kind of Roman Catholic.
- ↑ Many of the blades, being made by convicts at the state prisons, are sold cheap. The extent of the timber regions necessitated this excellent implement, and the saving of labor on the European article is enormous.
- ↑ A shrub 10–15 feet high, with a fruit about the size of a pea, red like a wild rose-hip, and with a pleasant sub-acid flavor: the Indians eat it with avidity, and it is cultivated in the gardens at Great Salt Lake City.
- ↑ Tannery was the first technological process introduced into the Mormon Valley: hence all home industry has obtained the sobriquet of "Valley Tan."
