Porter Rockwell is a man whom my readers must have heard of in every account of fearlessly executed massacre committed in Utah during the last thirteen years. He is the chief of the Danites,—a band of saints who possess the monopoly of vengeance upon Gentiles and apostates. If a Mormon tries to sneak off to California by night, after converting his property into cash, their knives have the inevitable duty of changing his destination to another state, and bringing back his goods into the Lord's treasury. Their bullets are the ones which find their unerring way through the brains of external enemies. They are the Heaven-elected assassins of Mormonism,—the butchers by divine right. Porter Rockwell has slain his forty men. This is historical. His probable private victims amount to as many more. He wears his hair braided behind, and done up in a knot with a back-comb, like a woman's. He has a face full of bull-dog courage,—but vastly good-natured, and without a bad trait in it. I went out riding with him on the Fourth of July, and enjoyed his society greatly,—though I knew that at a word from Brigham he would cut my throat in as matter-of-fact a style as if I had been a calf instead of an author. But he would have felt no unkindness toward me on that account. I understood his anomaly perfectly, and found him one of the pleasantest murderers I ever met. He was mere executive force, from which the lever, conscience, had suffered entire disjunction, being in the hand of Brigham. He was everywhere known as the Destroying Angel, but he seemed to have little disagreement with his toddy, and took his meals regularly. He has two very comely and pleasant wives. Brigham has about seventy, Heber about thirty. The seventy of Brigham do not include those spiritually married, or "sealed" to him, who may never see him again after the ceremony is performed in his back-office. These often have temporal husbands, and marry Brigham only for the sake of belonging to his lordly establishment in heaven.
Salt Lake City, Brigham told me, he believed to contain sixteen thousand inhabitants. Its houses are built generally of adobe or wood,—a few of stone,—and though none of them are architecturally ambitious, almost all have delightful gardens. Both fruit- and shade-trees are plenty and thrifty. Indeed, from the roof of the Opera-House the city looks fairly embowered in green. It lies very picturesquely on a plain quite embasined among mountains, and the beauty of its appearance is much heightened by the streams which run on both sides of all the broad streets, brought down from the snow-peaks for purposes of irrigation. The Mormons worship at present in a plain, low building,—I think, of adobe,—called the Tabernacle, save during the intensely hot weather, when an immense booth of green branches, filled with benches, accommodates them more comfortably. Brigham is erecting a Temple of magnificent granite, (much like the Quincy,) about two hundred feet long by one hundred and twenty-five feet wide. If this edifice be ever finished, it will rank among the most capacious religious structures of the continent.
The lake from which the city takes its name is about twenty miles distant from the latter, by a good road across the level valley-bottom. Artistically viewed, it is one of the loveliest sheets of water I ever saw,—bluer than the intensest blue of the ocean, and practically as impressive, since, looking from the southern shore, you see only a water-horizon. This view, however, is broken by a magnificent mountainous island, rising, I should think, seven or eight hundred feet from the water, half a dozen miles from shore, and apparently as many miles in circuit. The density of the lake-brine has been under- instead of over-stated. I swam out into it for a considerable distance, then lay upon my back on, rather than in, the water, and suffered the breeze to waft me landward again. I was blown to a spot where the lake was only four inches deep, without grazing my back, and did not know I had got within my depth again until I depressed my hand a trifle and touched bottom! It is a mistake to call this lake azoic. It has no fish, but breeds myriads of strange little maggots, which presently turn into troublesome gnats. The rocks near the lake are grandly castellated and cavernous crags of limestone, some of it finely crystalline, but most of it like our coarser Trenton and Black-River groups. There is a large cave in this formation, ten minutes' climb from the shore.
I must abruptly leap to the overland stage again.
From Salt Lake City to Washoe and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the road lies through the most horrible desert conceivable by the mind of man. For the sand of the Sahara we find substituted an impalpable powder of alkali, white as the driven snow, stretching for ninety miles at a time in one uninterrupted dazzling sheet, which supports not even that last obstinate vidette of vegetation, the wild-sage brush. Its springs are far between, and, without a single exception, mere receptacles of a salt, potash, and sulphur hell-broth, which no man would drink, save in extremis. A few days of this beverage within, and of wind-drifted alkali invading every pore of the body without, often serve to cover the miserable passenger with an erysipelatous eruption which presently becomes confluent and irritates him to madness. Meanwhile he jolts through alkali-ruts, unable to sleep for six days and nights together, until frenzy sets in, or actual delirium comes to his relief. I look back on that desert as the most frightful nightmare of my existence.
As if Nature had not done her worst, we were doomed, on the second day out from Salt Lake, to hear, at one station, where we stopped, horrid rumors of Goshoots on the war-path, and, ere the day reached its noon, to find their proofs irrefragable. Every now and then we saw in the potash-dust moccasin-tracks, with the toes turned in, and presently my field-glass revealed a hideous devil skulking in the mile-off ledges, who was none other than a Goshoot spy. How far off were the scalpers and burners?
The first afternoon-stage that day was a long and terrible one. The poor horses could hardly drag our crazy wagon, up to its hubs in potash; and yet we knew our only safety, in case of attack, was a running fight. We must fire from our windows as the horses flew.
About four o'clock we entered a terrible defile, which seemed planned by Nature for treachery and ambush. The great, black, barren rocks of porphyry and trachyte rose three hundred feet above our heads, their lower and nearer ledges being all so many natural parapets to fire over, loop-holed with chinks to fire through. There were ten rifles in our party. We ran them out, five on a side, ready to send the first red villain who peeped over the breastworks to quick perdition. Our six-shooters lay across our laps, our bowie-knives were at our sides, our cartouch-boxes, crammed with ready vengeance, swung open on our breast-straps. We sat with tight-shut teeth,—only muttering now and then to each other, in a glum undertone, "Don't get nervous,—don't throw a single shot away,—take aim,—remember it's for home!" Something of that sort, or a silent squeeze of the hand, was all that passed, as we sat with one eye glued to the ledges and our guns unswerving. None of us, I think, were cowards; but the agony of sitting there, tugging along two miles an hour, expecting to hear a volley of yells and musketry ring over the next ledge, drinking the cup of thought to its miscroscopic dregs,—that was worse than fear!
Only one consolation was left us. In the middle of the defile stood an overland station, where we were to get fresh horses. The next stage was twenty miles long. If we were attacked in force, we might manage to run it, almost the whole way, unless the Indians succeeded in shooting one of our team,—the coup they always attempt.
I have no doubt we were ambushed at several points in that defile, but our perfect preparation intimidated our foes. The Indian is cruel as the grave, but he is an arrant coward. He will not risk being the first man shot, though his band may overpower the enemy afterward.