almost than the two—Cold Springs and Rock Creek—which we called our horrors, and which had always seemed to be the ne plus ultra of Western discomfort. The shanty was made of dry stone piled up against a dwarf cliff to save back wall, and ignored doors and windows. The flies—unequivocal sign of unclean living!—darkened the table and covered every thing put upon it; the furniture, which mainly consisted of the different parts of wagons, was broken, and all in disorder; the walls were impure, the floor filthy. The reason was at once apparent. Two Irishwomen, sisters,[1] were married to Mr. Dawvid, and the house was full of "childer," the noisiest and most rampageous of their kind. I could hardly look upon the scene without disgust. The fair ones had the porcine Irish face—I need hardly tell the reader that there are three orders of physiognomy in that branch of the Keltic family, viz., porcine, equine, and simian—the pig-faced, the horse-faced, and the monkey-faced. Describing one I describe both sisters; her nose was "pugged," apparently by gnawing hard potatoes before that member had acquired firmness and consistency; her face was powdered with freckles; her hair, and, indeed, her general costume, looked, to quote Mr. Dow's sermon, as though she had been rammed through a bush fence into a world of wretchedness and woe. Her dress was unwashed and in tatters, and her feet were bare; she would not even take the trouble to make for herself moccasins. Moreover, I could not but notice that, though the house contained two wives, it boasted only of one cubile, and had only one cubiculum. Such things would excite no surprise in London or Naples, or even in many of the country parts of Europe; but here, where ground is worthless, where building material is abundant, and where a few hours of daily labor would have made the house look at least respectable, I could not but wonder at it. My first impulse was to attribute the evil, uncharitably enough, to Mormonism; to renew, in fact, the stock-complaint of nineteen centuries' standing—
"Fœcunda culpæ secula nuptias
Primùm inquinavere, et genus et domus."
A more extended acquaintance with the regions west of the Wasach taught me that the dirt and discomfort were the growth of the land. To give the poor devils their due, Dawvid was civil and intelligent, though a noted dawdler, as that rare phenomenon, a Scotch idler, generally is. Moreover, his wives were not deficient in charity; several Indians came to the door, and none went away without a "bit" and a "sup." During the process of sketching one of these men, a Snake, distinguished by his vermilion'd hair-parting, eyes blackened, as if by lines of soot or surma, and delicate Hindoo-like hands, my eye fell upon the German-silver
- ↑ A man (Mormon) may even marry a mother and her daughters: usually the relationship with the former is Platonic; the tie, however, is irregular, and has been contracted in ignorance of the prohibited degrees.
