I HAD long determined to add the last new name—Great Salt Lake City—to my list of Holy Cities; to visit the new rival, soi-disant, of Memphis, Benares, Jerusalem, Rome, and Meccah; and to observe the origin and working of a regular go-ahead Western revelation. Mingled with the wish of prospecting the city of the Mormons from a spiritual point of view was the mundane desire of enjoying a little skirmishing with the savages, who had lately been giving the “pale-faces” tough work to do.
The man was ready, the hour hardly appeared propitious for other than belligerent purposes. Throughout the summer of 1860 an Indian war was raging in Nebraska; the Comanches, Kiowas, and Cheyennes were “out”; the Federal Government had despatched three columns to the centres of confusion; intestine feuds amongst the aborigines were talked of; the Dakota, or Sioux, had threatened to “wipe out” their old foe the Pawnee. Both tribes were possessors of the soil over which the road to Great Salt Lake City ran. Horrible accounts of murdered post-boys and cannibal emigrants, grossly exaggerated
as usual, filled the papers. “Going amongst the Mormons!” said a friend to me at New Orleans. “They are shooting and cutting one another in all directions. How can you expect to escape?” But sagely reflecting that “dangers which loom large from afar generally lose size as one draws near,” and that even the Mormons might turn out less black than they were painted, I resolved to run the risk of the “red nightcap” from the bloodthirsty Indians and the poisoned bowie-dagger from the jealous Latter-Day Saints. I therefore applied myself to then audacious task of an expedition to the City of the Mormons.
There were three roads to be chosen from—the three main lines, perhaps, for a Pacific railway between the Mississippi and the Western Ocean—the northern, the central, and the southern. The first, or British, was not to be thought of, since it involved semi-starvation, a possible plundering by the Bedouins, and, what was far worse, five or six months of slow travel. The third, or southern, took twenty-four days and nights, and the journey was accompanied by excessive heat in a malarial climate, to say nothing of poisonous food. There remained only the central road, which has two branches; of these I chose the great emigrant road from Missouri to California. The mail coach on this line was not what one would call luxurious, and the hours of halting-places were badly selected. The schedule time from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Great Salt Lake City was twenty-one days; we accomplished
it, it turned out, in nineteen. I therefore travelled to St. Joseph, disrespectfully known as St. Jo, bought my ticket, and prepared to start.
An important part in my preparations was the kit, which in my case was represented as follows:—One India-rubber blanket, pierced in the centre for a poncho, and with buttons and elastic loops, which converted it into a carpet bag. I ought to have added a buffalo robe as a bed, but ignorance prevented. With one’s coat as a pillow, a buffalo robe, and a blanket, one might defy the dangerous “bunks” of the stations. For weapons I carried two revolvers. In those days, from the moment of leaving St. Joseph to the time of reaching Placerville or Sacramento, the pistol ought never to be absent from a man’s right hand, nor the bowie-knife from his left. Contingencies with Indians and others might happen, when the difference of an instant might save life. In dangerous places the revolver should be discharged and loaded every morning, both for the purpose of keeping the hand in and doing the weapon justice. A revolver is an admirable tool when properly used. Those, however, who are too idle or careless to attend to it had better carry a pair of “Derringers.” I took also some opium, which is invaluable on the prairie, and some other drugs against fever. The “holy weed, Nicotian,” was not forgotten, for cigars were most useful, as the driver either received or took the lion’s share. The prairie traveller was not very particular about his clothes; the easiest dress was a dark flannel shirt, worn over
the normal article, no braces, but a broad leather belt for a six-shooter and a “Kansas tooth-pick,” a long clasp-knife. The nether garments were forked with good buckskin, or they would infallibly have given out, and the lower ends were tucked into the boots, after the sensible fashion of our grandfathers. In cold weather—the nights were rarely warm—there was nothing better than an old English shooting-jacket; for riding or driving a large pair of buckskin gloves, or rather gauntlets, were advisable, and we did not forget spurs. The best hat was a brown felt, which, by boring holes around the brim to admit a ribbon, could be converted into a riding-hat or a nightcap, as you pleased. Having got my kit and purchased my ticket, I was ready to start.
Precisely at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, August 7th, 1860, there appeared in front of the Patee House, the Fifth Avenue Hotel of St. Joseph, the vehicle destined to be my home for the next three weeks. I scrutinised it curiously. It was what was known as a “concord coach,” a spring waggon, of which the body is shaped something like an English tax-cart considerably magnified. It paid no regard to appearances, but was safe, strong, and light. The wheels were five to six feet apart, affording security against capsizing; the tyres were of unusual thickness, and polished like steel by the hard, dry ground. The waggon bed was supported by iron bands, and the whole bed was covered with stout osnaburg, supported by strong bars of white oak. There was a sunshade, or hood, in front where
the driver sat, a curtain behind, which could be raised or lowered at discretion, and four flaps on each side, either folded up, or fastened down with hooks and eyes. The coach was drawn by a team of four mules, which were much preferred to horses as being more enduring. The rate of travel, on an average, was five miles an hour. This was good; between seven and eight was the maximum, which sank in hilly country to three or four.
We were detained more than an hour before we started. Our “plunder,” as they called the luggage, was clapped on with little ceremony, and when all was packed away (and a good deal of the comfort of the journey depended on the packing), we rattled through the dusty roads of St. Jo, got on the steam ferry, which conveyed us from the right to the left bank of the Missouri River, and landed us in “bleeding” Kansas. We then fell at once into the emigrant road, as it was called, to the Far West, a great thoroughfare at this point, open, broad, and well worn as a European turnpike or a Roman military road, and undoubtedly the best and longest natural highway in the world.