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Chap. IV.
RELIGIOUS ACRIMONY.—CLIQUISM.
233

vanian compatriot, Colonel S.C. Stambaugh, of the Militia, Surveyor General of Utah Territory. This gentleman is no great favorite with the Saints: they accuse him of a too great skillfulness in "mixing"—cocktails, for instance—and a degree of general joviality that swears (qui jure) with the grave and reverend seigniory around him. His crime, it appears to me, chiefly consists in holding a fat appointment. I need hardly say that at Great Salt Lake City party feeling rises higher, perhaps, than in any other small place, because religious acrimony is superadded to the many conflicting interests. Every man's concerns are his neighbor's; no one, apparently, ever heard of that person who "became immensely rich"—to quote an Americanism—by "minding his own business." As often happens, religion is made, like slavery in the Eastern States and opium in China, the cheval de bataille; the root of the quarrel must be sought deeper; in other words, interest, and interest only, is the Tisiphone that shakes the brand of war. As Mormonism grows, its frame becomes more strongly knit. Thus the Gentile merchants, who have made from 120 to 600 per cent. on capital, were, at the time of my visit, preparing to sell off, because they found the combination against them overpowering. For the most part they vowed that there is no people with whom they would rather do business than with the Mormons; praised their honesty and punctuality in payments, and compared them advantageously in such matters with those of the older faith. Yet they had resolved to remove. The total number of Gentiles in the city is probably not more than 300, a small proportion to a body of at least 9000.

A stranger, especially an official, is kindly warned, on his first arrival at Great Salt Lake City, of its inveterate cliquism, and is amicably advised to steer a middle course, without turning to the right or to the left, between the Scylla and Charybdis of Christianity and Mormonism. This mezzo-termine may be possible in official matters; in society it is not. I soon saw that, though a traveler on the wing might sit alternately in the tents of Shem and Japhet, a resident would soon be obliged to dwell exclusively in either one or the other. When Gentile and Mormon meet, they either maintain a studied or surly silence, or they enter into a dialogue which, on a closer acquaintance with its formation, proves to be a conglomerate of "rile" and "knagg"—an unpleasant predicament for those en tiers. Such, at least, was my short experience, and I believe that of my companions.

Colonel Stambaugh, a day or two after the introduction, offered to act cicerone through the settlement, and I was happy to accept his kindness. One fine evening we drove along the Tooele Road westward, and drank of the waters of the New Jordan, which, to the unregenerate palate, tasted, I must say, somewhat brackish and ill-flavored. The river is at this season about one hundred feet broad, and not too deep below its banks to be useless for irri-