Is it not wonderful to find men thus reverting to an intellectual type that the world had supposed to be extinct? to find men, shrewd in business, honest in every phase of temporal life, going back to cheiromancy and hydromancy, and transacting temporal affairs at the guidance of visions? An Indian prays for rain on his pumpkins, in apparently the most unreasonable way, but the Mormon postpones his departure till the rain that results is over. On his way he nearly dies of thirst, prays for deliverance, and in half an hour snow falls over a mile and a half of ground, melts and forms pools of water! What are we to say of men who say such things as these? Are they all crazy together? And what shall we think of the thousands here who believe that miracles are the most ordinary, reasonable, natural, every-day phenomena of a life of faith, and quote point-blank the promises of the New Testament as a sufficient explanation? The best thing, perhaps, is to say Hum meditatively, and think no more about it.
CHAPTER XVII.
THROUGH MARYSVALE TO KINGSTON.
Piute Count—-Days of small things—A swop in the sage-brush; two Bishops for one Apostle—The Kings Of Kingston—A failure in Family Communism.
FROM the brow of the cedared hill south of Munroe a splendid view is obtained, and Piute County opens with fair promises; for a superb-looking valley, all natural meadow, lies spread out on either side of the Sevier, while from a gulch in the mountains on the right, a stream of vegetation seems to have poured down across the level, carrying along with its flood of cotton-wood and willow a few stately old pine-trees. From among the vegetation peeps out a cluster of miners' houses—for there are the Sevier mines up beyond that pine gulch—and a ranch or two. Much of the enchantment of distance vanishes of course as we come down to the level of the plains ourselves and skirt it close under the hills on the left. But it is a fine location nevertheless, and some day, no doubt, may be a populous valley. After a mile or two it narrows, and we cross the river—a wooden bridge, with a store and barns—("Lisonbee's place") making a pleasant interval of civilization.
From "Lisonbee's" the road passes up on to and over a stony plateau, and then descends into the valley again. Cattle and horses are grazing in the meadow, and the dark patches of wire-grass are spangled with yellow lupins, and tinted pink in places with patches of a beautiful orchid-like flower. On the edge of this pleasant-looking tract stand two small cottages, and to one of these we are welcomed by its Mormon occupants. To me the whole country had an aspect of desperate desolation. Yet our host had just come back from "the Post;" his children were away "at school;" the newspaper on his table was the latest we had ourselves seen. It is true that the post was literally a post, with a cigar-box nailed on the top of it, standing all by itself among the brushwood on the roadside. The school was a mile or two off, "just over the hill," and, till the regular teacher came, a volunteer was making shift to impart education to the little scholars who came straggling over the dreary hill-sides by twos and threes. Yet, rudimentary though they be, these are the first symptoms of a civilization triumphing over sage-brush, and give even to such desperately small beginnings a significance that is very interesting. All the thriving settlements I have visited began exactly in the same way—and under worse conditions, too, for the Indian was then a stronger power than the Mormon.
Our host here had shot among the reeds in his meadow a large bird, the size of an average goose, black with white spots, which he had been told was "a loon." It was one of the larger "divers," its neck being very long and snake-like, terminating in a comparatively small head, its wings very short and its legs (the feet webbed) set, as in all diving birds, far back on the body.
Leaving this very young "settlement," we found ourselves again in a wretched, waterless country, where the vegetation did not compensate for its monotony by any attractions of colour, nor the mountains for their baldness by any variety of contour. Here and there stunted cedars had huddled together for company into a gulch, as if afraid to be scattered about singly on such lonesome hill-sides, and away on the right, in a dip under the hills, we caught a glimpse of Marysvale.
Traversing this forbidding tract, we met another waggon on its way to Munroe, and stopping to exchange greetings, it suddenly occurred to one of the strangers that by our exchanging vehicles the horses and their teamsters would both be going home instead of away from it, and thus everybody be advantaged! The exchange was accordingly effected, our teamster getting two Bishops in exchange for an Apostle and a correspondent, and the waggons being turned round in their tracks, the teams, to their unconcealed satisfaction, started off towards their respective homes.
Sage-brush and sand, with occasional patches of tiresome rock fragments and unlimited lizards—nature's hieroglyphics for sultry sterility—were the only features of the journey. Away on our left, however, the track of a water-channel, that when completed will turn many thousands of these arid acres into farm-lands, scarred the red hill-side, and told the same old story of Mormon industry. Where it came from I have forgotten, where it was going to I do not remember, but it was in sight off and on for some thirty miles, and was probably carrying the waters of the Sevier on to the Circle-ville plains.