40. Brigham Young. April 1860 to November 1860.
It was natural that, after seeing the Mecca of the Mohammedans, Burton should turn to the Mecca of the Mormons, for he was always attracted by the centres of the various faiths, moreover he wished to learn the truth about a city and a religion that had previously been described only by the biassed. One writer, for instance—a lady—had vilified Mormonism because "some rude men in Salt Lake City had walked over a bridge before her." It was scarcely the most propitious moment to start on such a journey. The country was torn with intestine contentions. The United States Government were fighting the Indians, and the Mormons were busy stalking one another with revolvers. Trifles of this kind, however, did not weigh with Burton. After an uneventful voyage across the Atlantic, and a conventional journey overland, he arrived at St. Joseph, popularly St. Jo, on the Missouri. Here he clothed himself like a backwoodsman, taking care, however, to put among this luggage a silk hat and a frock coat in order to make an impression among the saints. He left St. Jo on August 7th and at Alcali Lake saw the curious spectacle of an Indian remove. The men were ill-looking, and used vermilion where they ought to have put soap; the squaws and papooses comported with them; but there was one pretty girl who had "large, languishing eyes, and sleek black hair like the ears of a King Charles Spaniel." The Indians followed Burton's waggon for miles, now and then peering into it and crying "How! How!" the normal salutation. His way then lay by darkling canons, rushing streams and stupendous beetling cliffs fringed with pines. Arrived at his destination, he had no difficulty, thanks to the good offices of a fellow traveller, in mixing in the best Mormon Society. He found himself in a Garden City. Every householder had from five to ten acres in the suburbs, and one and a half close at home; and the people seemed happy. He looked in vain, however, for the spires of the Mormon temple which a previous writer had described prettily as glittering in the sunlight. All he could find was "a great hole in the ground," said to be the beginning of a baptismal font, with a plain brick building, the Tabernacle, at a little distance. After a service at the "Tabernacle" he was introduced to Brigham Young, a farmer-like man of 45, who evinced much interest in the Tanganyika journey and discussed stock, agriculture and religion; but when Burton asked to be admitted as a Mormon, Young replied, with a smile, "I think you've done that sort of thing once before, Captain." So Burton was unable to add Mormonism to his five or six other religions. Burton then told with twinkling eyes a pitiful tale of how he, an unmarried man, had come all the way to Salt Lake City, requiring a wife, but had found no wives to be had, all the ladies having been snapped up by the Saints. A little later the two men, who had taken a stroll together, found themselves on an eminence which commanded a view both of the Salt Lake city and the Great Salt Lake. Brigham Young pointed out the various spots of interest, "That's Brother Dash's house, that block just over there is occupied by Brother X's wives. Elder Y's wives reside in the next block and Brother Z's wives in that beyond it. My own wives live in that many-gabled house in the middle."
Waving his right hand towards the vastness of the great Salt Lake, Burton exclaimed, with gravity:
"Water, water, everywhere"
and then waving his left towards the city, he added, pathetically:
"But not a drop to drink."
Brigham Young, who loved a joke as dearly as he loved his seventeen wives, burst out into hearty laughter. In his book, "The City of the Saints," Burton assures us that polygamy was admirably suited for the Mormons, and he gives the religious, physiological and social motives for a plurality of wives then urged by that people. Economy, he tells us, was one of them. "Servants are rare and costly; it is cheaper and more comfortable to marry them. Many converts are attracted by the prospect of becoming wives, especially from places like Clifton, near Bristol, where there are 64 females to 36 males. The old maid is, as the ought to be, an unknown entity." [178]
Burton himself received at least one proposal of marriage there; and the lady, being refused, spread the rumour that it was the other way about. "Why," said Burton, "it's like
A certain Miss Baxter,
Who refused a man before he'd axed her." [179]
As regards the country itself nothing struck him so much as its analogy to Palestine. A small river runs from the Wahsatch Mountains, corresponding to Lebanon, and flows into Lake Utah, which represents Lake Tiberias, whence a river called the Jordan flows past Salt Lake City into the Great Salt Lake, just as the Palestine Jordan flows into the Dead Sea.