and wicked. Then followed the Brazen age, in which crime and disorder reached its highest pitch. This was the age of the Titans, and of their war against the gods, which issued in the triumph of the latter. But the Grecian mythology does not embrace the idea of an elevation or restoration of mankind. It gives us the Iron age as the closing term of human degeneracy, and there it leaves us. The idea of malevolent supernatural influences being at work among men, fostering this evil spirit of disobedience, and causing grand and awful disturbances in the physical world, to the dismay and destruction of mankind, is universal. It has been reserved for the Christian system to bring out the truth of a divine fatherhood and rulership of love, through whom and through which the devout may find safety 'amid the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds.'

MR. MERRIMAN: Utah is much more picturesque in its physical features than I supposed.

DR. PAULUS: It is divided into two sections by the Wahsatch Mountains which form part of the eastern slope of the Great Basin. The waters which flow westward find no outlet to the ocean for reasons which I have explained. The Wahsatch range is grand and full of features of interest. The Uintah range is also very picturesque, with towering peaks covered with perpetual snow. For extreme diversity of scenery and climate, this part of the United States is almost without parallel.

ALBERT: It will be a long time before the Great Basin becomes populous.

DR. PAULUS: Portions of it will never become so, but it has, as we have seen, great mineral wealth locked up within it, and some of it is already finding its outlet. KATE: Perhaps the rivers which now sink into it may some day find their way out also.

DR. PAULUS: At Humboldt wells there are about thirty springs, some of which have been sounded over 500 yards without touching bottom. As these springs rise to the surface it is supposed that they may be the outlet of some vast subterranean lake. But the surrounding region is most desolate, and, I agree with Albert, not likely to attract visitors at present, although it is thought that the Humboldt valley might be made productive by irrigation. Being the highway between East and West, this valley may become, in the near future, more attractive for labor and settlement.

CHAPTER VI.

SALT LAKE CITY AND THE MORMONS.

R. PAULUS: I have here a series of views of Salt Lake City. This place lies, so to speak, on the eastern edge of the Great Basin, at the westerly foot of a spur of the Wahsatch Mountains. We approach the city from Ogden, by the Utah Central Railroad, which follows the eastern shores of the Great Salt Lake. Salt Lake City is about twelve miles from the southern extremity of the lake. The first view shows the Wahsatch Mountains to the left or east, so that we are looking south. The second view is from a point southeast of the city, and therefore looking northwest, with the lake in the background. This is the point from which Brigham Young first saw the valley which was to be his future home, and the chief city of his deluded followers. And here I will ask my friend Bertram to relate to us some of the particulars which led to that memorable journey of Brigham Young. I know that he has been studying the history of this remarkable heresy, and can probably furnish the club with a brief summary of the leading incidents.

BERTRAM : I will do my best. The founder of the Mormon sect, as everybody knows, was Joe Smith, who brought out his book of Mormon in 1830, and in the same year organized the Mormon Church. He was an infamous man, notwithstanding his claims to be the leader of a religious sect; he tried his hand at banking, and cheated his depositors, and was otherwise disreputable. The Mormon Church removed its headquarters from place to place, being compelled to "move on" by the authorities and public sentiment. The irregularities mostly charged against them were burning and plundering houses, and secret assassinations. They were a kind of Ishmaelitish people, and were suspected of all kinds of crimes and misdeeds. At last, I think in 1839, they concentrated to the number of seven or eight thousand in Illinois, and built a city which they called Nauvoo, in Hancock County. They obtained a charter from the State, which permitted them to organize a little army,

and Smith became a general, as well as a self-styled prophet and apostle. For a time his authority was supreme in Nauvoo, and the Mormon Church increased rapidly, but at length his immoralities stirred up a spirit of hatred and revenge among his people, and some of them appealed to the State for protection. This led to a kind of civil war. Smith and his brother were captured and put in jail at Carthage, but the jail was attacked by an infuriated mob, and both were shot dead. Of course Mormon affairs were thrown into great confusion, out of which they were extricated by Brigham Young, who had been a rising man for some time in the

sect, and now put in a formal claim for the presidency of the Church and was chosen to that office. The State very properly revoked the charter of Nauvoo, and Young conceived the plan of emigrating to some far off place where the Mormons would be likely to be undisturbed for a great number of years. He prospected around in the vast region of the Rocky Mountains, and at last, in 1847, fixed upon the site of a city, and the Mormons, who had been having a hard time of it at Nauvoo, flocked thither to a man, and laid the foundations of the city.

DR. PAULUS: Admirably sketched, Mr. Bertram. And now I will do the Mormons the justice to say that their emigration or exodus from Illinois to Salt Lake