The atrocities culminated in the Mountain Meadows massacre in 1857, when hundreds of men, women, and children were murdered by men armed and clothed as Indians, but sworn to by some who escaped as being whites. Porter Rockwell has had the infamy of this tremendous slaughter piled on to the huge mass of his earlier deeds of blood—whether rightly or wrongly, who shall say? The man that I saw was the man that Captain Burton saw in 1860. His death was solemnly recorded in the autumn of that year, yet of the identity of the person I saw with the person described by Captain Burton there can be no question. The bald, frowning forehead, the sinister smile, the long grizzly curls falling upon the back, the red cheek, the coal beard, the gray eye, are not to be mistaken. Rockwell or not, he is a man capable of any deed. I had his photograph in my pocket, and wanted to get him to sign it; but when, in awe of his glittering bowie and of his fame, I asked, by way of caution, the ranchman—a new-come Paddy—whether Rockwell could write, the fellow told me with many an oath that “the boss” was as innocent of letters as a babe. “As for writin’,” he said, “cuss me if he‘s on it. You bet he‘s not—you bet.”
Not far beyond Rockwell‘s, we drove close to the bench-land; and I was able to stop for a moment and examine the rocks. From the veranda of the Mormon poet Naisbitt‘s house in Salt Lake City, I had remarked a double line of terrace running on one even level round the whole of the great valley to the south, cut by nature along the base alike of the Oquirrh and the Wasatch.
I had thought it possible that the terrace was the result of the varying hardness of the strata; but, near Black Rock, on the overland track, I discovered that where the terrace lines have crossed the mountain precipices, they are continued merely by deep stains upon the rocks. The inference is that within extremely recent, if not historic times, the water has stood at these levels from two to three hundred feet above the present Great Salt Lake City, itself 4500 feet above the sea. Three days’ journey farther west, on the Reese‘s River Range, I detected similar stains. Was the whole basin of the Rocky Mountains—here more than a thousand miles across—once filled with a huge sea, of which the two Sierras were the shores, and the Wasatch, Goshoot, Waroja, Toi, Abbé, Humboldt, Washoe, and a hundred other ranges, the rocks and isles? The Great Salt Lake is but the largest of many such. I saw one on Mirage Plains that is salter than its greater fellow. Carson Sink is evidently the bed of a smaller bitter lake; and there are salt pools in dozens scattered through Ruby and Smoky Valleys. The Great Salt Lake itself is sinking year by year, and the sage-brush is gaining upon the alkali desert throughout the Grand Plateau. All these signs point to the rapid drying-up of a great sea, owing to an alteration of climatic conditions.
In the Odd Fellows’ Library at San Francisco I found a map of North America, signed “John Harris, A.M.,” and dated “1605,” which shows a great lake in the country now comprised in the Territories of Utah and Dakota. It has a width of fifteen degrees, and is named “Thongo, or Thoya.” It is not likely that this inland sea is a mere exaggeration of the present Great Salt Lake, because the views of that sheet of water are everywhere limited by islands in such a way as to give to the eye the effect of exceeding narrowness. It is possible that the Jesuit Fathers, and other Spanish travelers from California, may have looked from the Utah mountains on the dwindling remnant of a great inland sea.
On we jogged and jolted, till we lost sight of the American dead sea and of its lovely valley, and got into a canyon floored with huge boulders and slabs of roughened rock, where I expected each minute to undergo the fate of that Indian traveler who received such a jolt that he bit off the tip of his own tongue, or of Horace Greeley, whose head was bumped, it is said, through the roof of his conveyance. Here, as upon the eastern side of the Wasatch, the track was marked by never-ending lines of skeletons of mules and oxen.
On the first evening from Salt Lake, we escaped once more from man at Stockton, a Gentile mining settlement in Rush Valley, too small to be called a village, though possessed of a municipality, and claiming the title of “city.” By night we crossed by Reynolds’ Pass the Parolom or Cedar Range, in a two-horse “jerky,” to which we had been shifted for speed and safety. Upon the heights the frost was bitter; and when we stopped at 3 A.M. for “supper,” in which breakfast was combined, we crawled into the stable like flies in autumn, half killed by the sudden chill. My miner spoke but once all night. “It‘s right cold,” he said; but fifty times at least he sang “The Wearing of the Green.” It was his only tune.
Soon after light, we passed the spot where Captain Gunnison of the Federal Engineers, who had been in 1853 the first explorer of the Smoky Hill route, was killed “by the Ute Indians.” Gunnison was an old enemy of the Mormons, and the spot is ominously near to Rockwell‘s home. Here we came out once more into the alkali, and our troubles from dust began. For hours we were in a desert white as snow; but for reward we gained a glorious view of the Goshoot Range, which we crossed by night, climbing silently on foot for hours in the moonlight. The walking saved us from the cold.
The third day—a Sunday morning—we were at the foot of the Waroja Mountains, with Egan Canyon for our pass, hewn by nature through the living rock. You dare swear you see the chisel-marks upon the stone. A gold-mill had years ago been erected here, and failed. The heavy machinery was lost upon the road; but the four stone walls contained between them the wreck of the lighter “plant.”
As we jolted and journeyed on across the succeeding plain, we spied in the far distance a group of black dots upon the alkali. Man seems very small in the infinite expanse of the Grand Plateau—the roof, as it were, of the world. At the end of an hour we were upon them—a company of “overlanders” “tracking” across the continent with mules. First came two mounted men, well armed with Deringers in the belt, and Ballard breech-loaders on the thigh, prepared for ambush—ready for action against elk or red-skin. About fifty yards behind these scowling fellows came the main band of bearded, red-shirted diggers, in huge boots and felt hats, each man riding one mule, and driving another laden with packs and buckets. As we came up, the main body halted, and an interchange of compliments began. “Say, mister, thet‘s a slim horse of yourn.” “Guess not—guess he‘s all sorts of a horse, he air. And how far might it be to the State of Varmount?” “Wall, guess the boys down to hum will be kinder joyed to see us, howsomever that may be.” Just at this moment a rattlesnake was spied, and every revolver discharged with a shout, all hailing the successful shot with a “Bully for you; thet hit him whar he lives.” And on, without more ado, they went.