In Salt Lake City Captain La Barge remained for some time arranging for the rest of his journey home. He could not hire a coach from Ben Holiday, proprietor of the overland line, for less than eighteen hundred dollars. The Wells-Fargo Express Company wanted twenty-five hundred dollars to send the dust by way of San Francisco, and would assume no responsibility. These conditions were not satisfactory, and the Captain purchased a team and wagon, with which he and three or four others undertook the journey alone. Their golddust was carried in bags of thick buckskin.
TEMPTING INDUCEMENTS.
While in Salt Lake City the Captain renewed his acquaintance with Brigham Young and other Mormons whom he had known on the Missouri. An old friend of his of the name of Hooper, who had turned Mormon, and later became a delegate from the Territory to Congress, called as soon as he heard that La Barge was in town. He also found there another friend, Hopkins by name, whom he had known from boyhood. Hopkins tried his best to induce La Barge to join the Mormons. He assured the Captain that if he would sell out in St. Louis and come to Utah it would be his fortune. As proof of this, he referred to himself and others, who, he said, had gone into Mormonism, not for any love of the doctrine, but as a simple business proposition. Hooper and Hopkins had both been unsuccessful in St. Louis. La Barge had taken them up on his boat to Fort Kearney, about 1852, and had always esteemed them good men. He asked the wife of one of them one day why her husband had never married again, since the doctrine of the Church and the sentiment of the community sanctioned it. “He doesn’t dare to; he knows I would leave him if he did,” she replied.
DIGNITARIES OF THE MORMON CHURCH.
The Captain called on Young several times. That dignitary received him very hospitably, took him to the Tabernacle and other places of interest, and presented him to several of his families. They went to the theater together, where they sat in a box with Young’s favorite wife, the other wives being ranged in seats below. Young never said anything intended to convert La Barge to his religion. Other members of the Church did, and particularly Orson Hyde, who was a man of education and a very persuasive talker. La Barge heard a sermon by Heber Kimball—a rough old fellow who took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and waded in. His language was coarse and vulgar, and would not bear repetition in refined ears.
The route of the Captain’s party, on leaving Salt Lake City, was through Weber Cañon to Fort Bridger. They stopped there a short time with Captain Carter, who, for many years, did business at that frontier post. From there they made their way east, and left the mountain country via the valley of the Cache à la Poudre River. In the valley of the South Platte they met an old man of the name of Geary, who told them that a band of hostile Indians was scouring the country between them and Denver, and that they had better conceal themselves for a few days on an island in the Platte River. They acted upon this advice, and when they judged the danger to be past they resumed their journey. They had gone but a little way when they came to a spot where a party of emigrants had been massacred only a day or two before. Their timely measure of precaution was therefore well taken.
A LONG VOYAGE.
The rest of the journey was made without noteworthy incident. The party reached the Missouri at Nebraska City just in time to catch the last boat to St. Louis. They arrived home about December 1. Captain La Barge found that the Effie Deans had returned and had been chartered by McCune’s company to go to Montgomery, Ala. She made this trip in safety, returning to St. Louis before ice closed in. Probably no other boat ever made so long a trip on inland waters in a single season, including also a sea voyage, as did the Effie Deans in 1864. The distance on the Missouri up and back was 4570 miles; that on the Mississippi to the Gulf and back was 2522 miles; that from Mobile to Montgomery and back was 676 miles; and that across the Gulf from the mouth of the Mississippi to Mobile and back not less than 600 miles. The whole distance traveled was about 8400 miles.
ANOTHER DILEMMA.
In April, 1865, Captain La Barge started up the river again on the Effie Deans. At Nebraska City came the news of Lee’s surrender, and at Decatur that of the assassination of Lincoln. There was great commotion among the passengers at the news of this terrible deed. There were many ex-Confederates on board, some of whom expressed their satisfaction at the event, and there might very easily have been trouble between them and the Union passengers; but Captain La Barge skillfully avoided all difficulty.