FROM NEPHI TO MANTI.

English companies and their failures—A deplorable neglect of claret cup—Into the San Pete Valley—Reminiscences of the Indians—The forbearance of the red man—The great temple at Manti—Masonry and Mormon mysteries—In a tithing-house.

FROM Nephi, a narrow-guage line runs up the Salt Creek canyon, and away across a wilderness to a little mining settlement called Wales, inhabited by Welsh Mormons who work at the adjacent coal-mines. The affair belongs to an English company, and it is worth noting that "English companies" are considered here to be very proper subjects for jest. When nobody else in the world will undertake a hopeless enterprise, an English company appears to be always on hand to embark in it, and this fact displays a confidence on the part of Americans in British credulity, and a confidence on the part of the Britishers in American honesty, which ought to be mutually instructive. Meanwhile this has nothing to do with these coal-mines in the San Pete Valley, which, for all I know, may be very sound concerns, and very profitable to the "English company" in question. I hope it is. The train was rather a curious one, though, for it stopped for passengers at the corner of the street, and when we got "aboard," we found a baggage car the only vehicle provided for us. A number of apostles and elders were on Conference tour, and the party, therefore, was a large one; so that, if the driver had been an enthusiastic anti-Mormon, he might have struck a severe blow at the Church by tilting us off the rails. The Salt Creek canyon is not a prepossessing one, but there grew in it an abundance of borage, the handsome blue heads of flowers showing from among the undergrowth in large patches.

What a waste of borage! Often have I deplored over my claret in India the absence of this estimable vegetable, and here in Utah with a perfect jungle of borage all about me, I had no claret! I pointed out to the apostles with us that temperance in such a spot was flying in the face of providence, and urged them to plant vineyards in the neighbourhood. But they were not enthusiastic, and I relapsed into silent contemplation over the incredible ways of nature, that she should thus cast her pearls of borage before a community of teetotallers.

Traversing the canyon, we enter San Pete Valley, memorable for the Indian War of 1865-67, but in itself as desolate and uninteresting a tract of country as anything I have ever seen. Ugly bald hills and leprous sand-patches in the midst of sage-brush, combined to form a landscape of utter dreariness; and the little settlements lying away under the hills on the far eastern edge of the valley—Fountain Green, Maroni, and Springtown—seemed to me more like penal settlements than voluntary locations. Yet I am told they are pretty enough, and certainly Mount Pleasant, the largest settlement in the San Pete country, looked as if it deserved its name. But it stands back well out of the desperate levels of the valley, and its abundant foliage tells of abundant water. A pair of eagles circled high up in the sky above us as we rattled along, expecting us apparently to die by the way, and hoping to be our undertakers. A solitary coyote was pointed out to me, a lean and uncared-for person, that kept looking back over its shoulder as it trotted away, as if it had a lingering sort of notion that a defunct apostle might by chance be thrown overboard. It was a hungry and a thirsty looking country, and Wales, where we left our train, was a dismal spot. Here we found waggons waiting for us, and were soon on our way across the desert, passing a settlement-oasis now and again, and crossing the San Pete "river," which here sneaks along, a muddy, shallow stream, at the bottom of high, willow-fringed banks. And so to Fort Ephraim, a quaint little one-street sort of place that looks up to Manti, a few miles off, as a little boy looks up to his biggest brother, and to Salt Lake City as a cat might look up to a king.

In 1865-67, however, it was an important point. Several companies of the Mormon militia were mustered here, and held the mountains and passes on the east against the Indians, guarded the stock gathered here from the other small settlements that had been abandoned, and took part in the fights at Thistle Creek, Springtown, Fish Lake, Twelve Mile Creek Gravelly Ford, and the rest, where Black Hawk and his flying squadron of Navajos and Piutes showed themselves such plucky men. It is a pity, I think, that the history of that three years' campaign has never been sketched, for, as men talk of it, it must have abounded with stirring incident and romance. Besides, a well-written history of such a campaign, with the lessons it teaches, might be useful some day—for the fighting spirit of the Indians is not broken, and when another Black Hawk appears upon the scene, 1865 might easily be re-enacted, and Fort Ephraim once more be transformed from a farming hamlet to a military camp.

Yet I have often wondered at the apathy or the friendship of the Indians. Herds of cattle and horses and sheep wander about among the mountains virtually unguarded. Little villages full of grain, and each with its store well stocked with sugar, and tobacco, and cloths, and knives, and other things that the Indians prize, lie almost defenceless at the mouths of canyons. Yet they have not been molested for the last fifteen years. I confess that if I were an Indian chief, I should not be able to resist the temptation of helping my tribe to an occasional surfeit of beef, with the amusement thrown in of plundering a co-operative store. But the Mormons say that the Indian is more honest than a white man and, in illustration of this, are ready to give innumerable instances of an otherwise inexplicable chivalry. For one thing, though, the Mormons are looked upon by the Indians in quite a different light to other Americans, for they consider them to be victims, like themselves, of Federal dislike, while both as individuals and a class they hold them in consideration as being superior to Agents in fidelity to engagements. So that the compliment of honesty is mutually reciprocated. To illustrate this aspect of the Mormon-Indian relations, some Indians came the other day into a settlement and engaged in a very protracted pow-wow, the upshot of all their roundabout palaver being this, that inasmuch as they, the Indians, had given Utah to the Mormons, it was preposterous for the Mormons to pay the Government for the land they took up!

From Fort Ephraim to Manti the road lies chiefly through unreclaimed land, but within a mile or two of the town the irrigated suburbs of Manti break in upon the sage-brush, and the Temple, which has been visible in the distance half the day, grows out from the hills into definite details. The site of this imposing structure certainly surprised me both for the fine originality of its conception, and the artistic sympathy with the surrounding scenery, which has directed its erection. The site originally was a rugged hill slope, but this has been cut out into three vast semicircular terraces, each of which is faced with a wall of rough hewn stone, seventeen feet in height. Ascending these by wide flights of steps, you find yourself on a fourth level, the hill top, which has been levelled into a spacious plateau, and on this, with its back set against the hill, stands the temple. The style of Mormon architecture, unfortunately, is heavy and unadorned, and in itself, therefore, this massive pile, 160 feet in length by 90 wide, and about 100 high, is not prepossessing, But when it is finished, and the terrace slopes are turfed, and the spaces planted out with trees, the view will undoubtedly be very fine, and the temple be a building that the Mormons may well be proud of. Looked at from the plain, with the stern hills behind it, the edifice is seen to be in thoroughly artistic harmony with the scene, while the enormous expenditure of labour upon its erection is a matter for astonishment. The plan of the building inside differs from those of the temples at Logan, St. George, and Salt Lake City, which again differ from each other, for it is a curious fact that the ritual of the secret ceremonies to which these buildings are chiefly devoted, is still under elaboration and imperfect, so that each temple in turn partially varies from its predecessor, to suit the latest alterations made in the Endowments and other rites celebrated within its walls. In my description of the Logan Temple, I gave a sketch of the purposes for which the various parts of the building were intended. That sketch, of course, cannot pretend to be exact, for only those Mormons who have "worked" through the degrees can tell the whole truth; and as yet no one has divulged it. But with a general knowledge of the rites, and an intimate acquaintance with freemasonry, I have, I believe, put together the only reliable outline that has ever been published. The Manti temple will have the same arrangements of baptismal font and dressing-rooms on the ground floor, but as well as I could judge from the unfinished state of the building, the "endowments," in the course of which are symbolical representations of the Creation, Temptation and Fall, will be spread over two floors, the apartment for "baptism for the dead" occupying a place on the lower. The "sealing" is performed on the third. I have an objection to prying into matters which the Mormons are so earnest in keeping secret, but as a mason, the connexion between Masonry and Mormonism is too fascinating a subject for me to resist curiosity altogether.

As a settlement, Manti is pretty, well-ordered and prosperous. The universal vice of unbridged water-courses disfigures its roads just as it does those of every other place (Salt Lake City itself not excepted), and the irregularity in the order of occupation of lots gives it the same scattered appearance that many other settlements have. But the abundance of trees, the width of the streets, the perpetual presence of running water, the frequency and size of the orchards, and the general appearance of simple, rustic, comfort impart to Manti all the characteristic charm of the Mormon settlements. The orthodox grist and saw-mills, essential adjuncts of every outlying hamlet, find their usual place in the local economy; but to me the most interesting corner was the quaint tithing-house, a Dutch-barn kind of place, still surrounded by the high stone stockade which was built for the protection of the settlers during the Indian troubles fifteen years ago. Inside the tithing-house were two great bins half filled with wheat and oats, and a few bundles of wool. I had expected to find a miscellaneous confusion of articles of all kinds, but on inquiry discovered that the popular theory of Mormon tithing, "a tenth of everything,"—"even to the tenth of every egg that is laid," as a Gentile lady plaintively assured me, is not carried out in practice, the majority of Mormons allowing their tithings to run into arrears, and then paying them up in a lump in some one staple article, vegetable or animal, that happens to be easiest for them. The tenth of their eggs or their currant jam does not, therefore, as supposed, form part of the rigid annual tribute of these degraded serfs to their grasping masters. As a matter of fact, indeed, the payment of tithings is as nearly voluntary as the collection of a revenue necessary for carrying on a government can possibly be allowed to be. What it may have been once, is of no importance now. But to-day, so far from there being any undue coercion, I have amply assured myself that there is extreme consideration and indulgence, while the general prosperity of the territory justifies the leniency that prevails.