My father had charged me many times, that if ever I went to Salt Lake I should go and see these people. In 1878 I happened to be in the Mormon centre. From a man cutting stones for the new Mormon tabernacle I enquired for the family. The stone-cutter dropped his mallet as quickly as if shot, and replied that he knew them well, and would get a conveyance and take me to them, twenty-five miles down Salt Lake valley, and assured me of a most hearty welcome.
I did not, however, accept his offer, for, honestly, I confess I was afraid of the Mormons. As a “Gentile” I feared to risk my life among them, and preferred not to leave the protection of United States troops at Camp Douglas.
After the Irish rebellion there came to New York State a talented Irishman, who lodged on the United States side of the Niagara River at the Falls. From that point of vantage he daily watched the Canadian shore just across the river. Like the moth and the candle, he could not keep away from Britain after all. But while he remained there this is what he wrote of us:
THE RED-CROSS FLAG.
I.
Beside Niagara’s awful wave
He stood—a ransom’d Irish slave;
Self-ransom’d by a woful flight,
That robbed his heaven of half its light,
And flung him in a nation free—
The fettered slave of Memory.
II.
The exile’s eye strove not to rest
Upon the Cataract’s curling crest,
Nor paused it on the brilliant bow
Which hung aslant the gulf below;
The banks of adamant to him
Were unsubstantial all and dim,
But from his gaze a child had guessed
There raged a cataract in his breast.
III.
A flag against the northern sky
Alone engaged his eager eye;
Upon Canadian soil it stood—
Its hue was that of human blood,
Its red was crossed with pallid scars—
Pale, steely, stiff as prison bars.
“Oh, cursed flag!” the exile said,
“The hair grows heavy on my head;
My blood leaps wilder than this water,
On seeing thee, thou sign of slaughter.
Oh, may I never meet my death
Till I behold the day of wrath,
When on thy squadrons shall be poured
The vengeance heaven so long has stored.”