ah was one of extreme peril and anxiety, and for years it was a
question whether they would survive or perish. Had they been actuated by
conscience, by pure religious zeal, by patriotism, by any of the nobler
sentiments, they would have made an enviable reputation in history and
gone down to posterity as a society commanding the respect and
veneration of the world; but when it is known that no community or state
even would tolerate them and that they sought this uninhabitable wild,
this unknown and then foreign territory, to escape the punishment of
their crimes, and to practise an abhorrent and barbarous tenet of their
faith, their glory departs and they look and will look in the light of
history abject and pitiable. Some conception of their great undertaking
in crossing the continent may be imagined when we reflect there were no
roads, no known way across the vast arid plains, no mountain cuts, no
bridged streams, no drinking water for miles upon miles with long
tedious marches resulting in sickness and death.

To one acquainted with the country, knowing the obstacles they overcame,
it is a matter of wonder that women and children were ever able to
perform it. It must be remembered that their destination reached, their
trials had only fairly begun. They were surrounded by savages, they were
over a thousand miles from the habitation of a white man. They had
pitched their tents on an alkali plain that had never been tilled; not a
blade of grass grew in the soil and this in a climate where not a drop
of rain or even a cloud appeared for six months in the year. Irrigation
had never been tried, and the whole scheme was an experiment, the
failure of which would have been fatal to the settlement. The first
winter was spent in their wagons and in tents, while their subsistence
was upon a scanty supply of vegetables. It is no more than common
justice to accord to this people a great undertaking in founding the
settlements of the territory, and a great triumph in their complete
success; but above and beyond this, very little can be said in their
favor.

The legal title of the Mormon church is the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter Day Saints, and in the church parlance, Salt Lake city is a state
of Zion and the real Zion is at Jackson, Missouri, to which place the
Mormons claim they are some day to return. The Mormon church is a very
complicated institution, but as perfect in its organization and
operations as the Catholic churc