from a settled purpose, and experiment showed that, so far from being molested, he was received with a salute and all the honors. Having been warned that he might share the fate of Governor Boggs, who in 1848 was shot through the mouth when standing at the window, he enlarged the casements of his house in order to give the shooter a fair chance. His determination enabled him to issue, a few days after his arrival, a proclamation offering protection to all persons illegally restrained of their liberty in Utah. The scrupulous and conscientious impartiality which he has brought to the discharge of his difficult and delicate duties, and, more still, his resolution to treat the Saints like Gentiles and citizens, not as Digger Indians or felons, have won him scant favor from either party. The anti-Mormons use very hard language, and declare him to be a Mormon in Christian disguise. The Mormons, though more moderate, can never, by their very organization, rest contented without the combination of the temporal with the spiritual power. The governor does not meet his predecessor, the ex-governor, Mr. Brigham Young, from prudential motives, except on public duty. Mrs. Cumming visits Mrs. Young, and at the houses of the principal dignitaries, this being nearly the only society in the place. As, among Moslems, a Lady M. W. Montague can learn more of domestic life in a week than a man can in a year, so it is among the Mormons. I can not but express a hope that the amiable Mrs. Cumming will favor us with the results of her observation and experience, and that she will be as disinterested and unprejudiced as she is talented and accomplished. The kindness and hospitality which I found at the governor's, and, indeed, at every place in New Zion, is "ungrateful to omit," and would be "tedious to repeat."
We dined with his excellency at the usual hour, 2 P.M. On the way I could dwell more observantly upon the main features of the city, which, after the free use of the pocket-compass, were becoming familiar to me. The first remark was, that every meridional street is traversed on both sides by a streamlet of limpid water, verdure-fringed, and gurgling with a murmur which would make a Persian Moollah long for improper drinks. The supplies are brought in raised and hollowed water-courses from City Creek, Red Buttes, and other kanyons lying north and east of the settlement. The few wells are never less than forty-five feet deep; artesians have been proposed for the benches, but the expense has hitherto proved an obstacle. Citizens can now draw with scanty trouble their drinking water in the morning, when it is purest, from the clear and sparkling streams that flow over the pebbly beds before their doors. The surplus is reserved for the purposes of irrigation, without which, as the "distillation from above" will not suffice, Deserét would still be a desert, and what is not wanted swells the City Creek, and eventually the waves of the Jordan. The element, which flows at about the rate of four
