9. Lieutenant, afterward Captain Charles Wilkes, U. S. Navy, set out in 1838, and, after a long voyage of discovery in South America, Oceanica, and the Antarctic continent, made San Francisco on August 11, 1841. It is remarkable that this officer’s party were actually pitched upon the spot (New Helvetia, afterward called Sacramento City) where Californian gold was dug by the Mormons.
10. Captain R. B. Marcy, U. S. Army, “discovered and explored, located and marked out the wagon-road from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Santa Fé, New Mexico.” The road explorers, however, are too numerous to specify.
11. Governor I. I. Stevens, of Washington Territory, surveyed in 1853 the northern land proposed for a Pacific railway near the 47°-49° parallels, from St. Paul to Puget Sound. No portion of that line had been visited since the days of Lewis and Clarke, except a small portion toward the Pacific Ocean.
12. Captain Raynolds, United States Topographical Engineers, accompanied by Colonel Bridger as guide and interpreter, is still (1860) exploring the head-waters of the Yellow Stone River.
We passed a social evening at Green-River Station. It boasted of no less than three Englishwomen, two married, and one, the help, still single. Not having the Mormonite retenue, the dames were by no means sorry to talk about Birmingham and Yorkshire, their birthplaces. At 9 P.M. arrived one of the road-agents, Mr. Cloete, from whom I gathered that the mail-wagon which once ran from Great Salt Lake City had lately been taken off the road. The intelligence was by no means consolatory, but a course of meditation upon the saying of the sage, “in for a penny, in for a pound,” followed by another visit to my namesake’s grog-shop, induced a highly philosophical turn, which enabled me—with the aid of a buffalo—to pass a comfortable night in the store.
22d August. To Ham’s Fork and Millersville.
We were not under way before 8 A.M. Macarthy was again to take the lines, and a Giovinetto returning after a temporary absence to a young wife is not usually rejoiced to run his course. Indeed, he felt the inconveniences of a semi-bachelor life so severely, that he often threatened in my private ear, chemin faisant, to throw up the whole concern.
After the preliminary squabble with the mules, we forded the pebbly and gravelly bed of the river—in parts it looks like a lake exhausted by drainage—whose swift surging waters wetted the upper spokes of the wheels, and gurgled pleasantly around the bags which contained the mail for Great Salt Lake City.[115] We then ran down the river valley, which was here about one mile in breadth, in a smooth flooring of clay, sprinkled with water-rolled pebbles, overgrown in parts with willow, wild cherry, buffalo berries, and quaking asp. Macarthy pointed out in the road-side a rough grave, furnished with the normal tomb-stone, two pieces of wagon-board: it was occupied by one Farren, who had fallen by the revolver of the redoubtable Slade. MICHAEL MARTIN’S STORE.Presently we came to the store of Michael Martin, an honest Creole, who vended the staple of prairie goods, Champagne, bottled cocktail, “eye-opener,” and other liquors, dry goods—linen drapery—a few fancy goods, ribbons, and finery; brandied fruits, jams and jellies, potted provisions, buckskins, moccasins, and so forth. Hearing that Lieutenant Dana was en route for Camp Floyd, he requested him to take charge of $500, to be paid to Mr. Livingston, the sutler, and my companion, with the obligingness that marked his every action, agreed to deliver the dollars, sauve the judgment of God in the shape of Indians, or “White Indians.”[116] At the store we noticed a paralytic man. AN ORIGINAL.This original lived under the delusion that it was impossible to pass the Devil’s Gate: his sister had sent for him to St. Louis, and his friends tried to transport him eastward in chairs; the only result was that he ran away before reaching the Gate, and after some time was brought back by Indians.
[115] Sticklers for strict democracy in the United States maintain, on the principle that the least possible power should be delegated to the federal government, that the transmission of correspondence is no more a national concern than the construction of railways and telegraphs, or the transit of passengers and goods. The present system was borrowed from the monopolies of Europe, and was introduced into America at a time when individual enterprise was inadequate to the task; in the year one of the Republic it became, under the direction of Benjamin Franklin, a state department, and, though men argue in the abstract, few care to propose a private mail system, which would undertake the management of some 27,000 scattered offices and 40,000 poorly paid clerks.
On this line we saw all the evils of the contract system. The requisite regularity and quickness was neglected, letters and papers were often lost, the mail-bags were wetted or thrown carelessly upon the ground, and those intrusted to the conductors were perhaps destroyed. Both parties complain—the postmaster that the contractors seek to drive too hard a bargain with the department, and the contractors that they are carrying the mails at a loss. Since the restoration (in 1858) of the postal communication with the United States which was interrupted in 1857, the Mormons attempt to secure good service by advertising their grievances, and with tolerable success. Postmaster Morrill—a Gentile—complained energetically of the mail service during the last year, that letters were wetted and jumbled together, two of one month perhaps and one of another; that magazines often arrived four months after date, and that thirty sacks left at Rocky Ridge were lost. The consequence was that during my stay at Great Salt Lake City the contractors did their duty.