Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne [easy novels to read TXT] 📗

banker, and received from a simple mummy

showman a papyrus scroll written by Abraham and several famous Egyptians.

 

The Elder’s story became somewhat wearisome, and his audience

grew gradually less, until it was reduced to twenty passengers.

But this did not disconcert the enthusiast, who proceeded with

the story of Joseph Smith’s bankruptcy in 1837, and how his ruined

creditors gave him a coat of tar and feathers; his reappearance

some years afterwards, more honourable and honoured than ever,

at Independence, Missouri, the chief of a flourishing colony

of three thousand disciples, and his pursuit thence by outraged Gentiles,

and retirement into the Far West.

 

Ten hearers only were now left, among them honest Passepartout,

who was listening with all his ears. Thus he learned that,

after long persecutions, Smith reappeared in Illinois,

and in 1839 founded a community at Nauvoo, on the Mississippi,

numbering twenty-five thousand souls, of which he became mayor,

chief justice, and general-in-chief; that he announced himself,

in 1843, as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States;

and that finally, being drawn into ambuscade at Carthage,

he was thrown into prison, and assassinated by a band of men

disguised in masks.

 

Passepartout was now the only person left in the car, and the Elder,

looking him full in the face, reminded him that, two years after

the assassination of Joseph Smith, the inspired prophet, Brigham Young,

his successor, left Nauvoo for the banks of the Great Salt Lake, where,

in the midst of that fertile region, directly on the route of the emigrants

who crossed Utah on their way to California, the new colony, thanks to

the polygamy practised by the Mormons, had flourished beyond expectations.

 

“And this,” added Elder William Hitch, “this is why the jealousy of Congress

has been aroused against us! Why have the soldiers of the Union invaded

the soil of Utah? Why has Brigham Young, our chief, been imprisoned,

in contempt of all justice? Shall we yield to force? Never!

Driven from Vermont, driven from Illinois, driven from Ohio,

driven from Missouri, driven from Utah, we shall yet find some

independent territory on which to plant our tents. And you,

my brother,” continued the Elder, fixing his angry eyes

upon his single auditor, “will you not plant yours there,

too, under the shadow of our flag?”

 

“No!” replied Passepartout courageously, in his turn retiring

from the car, and leaving the Elder to preach to vacancy.

 

During the lecture the train had been making good progress,

and towards half-past twelve it reached the northwest border

of the Great Salt Lake. Thence the passengers could observe

the vast extent of this interior sea, which is also called the Dead Sea,

and into which flows an American Jordan. It is a picturesque expanse,

framed in lofty crags in large strata, encrusted with white salt—

a superb sheet of water, which was formerly of larger extent than now,

its shores having encroached with the lapse of time, and thus at once

reduced its breadth and increased its depth.

 

The Salt Lake, seventy miles long and thirty-five wide,

is situated three miles eight hundred feet above the sea.

Quite different from Lake Asphaltite, whose depression

is twelve hundred feet below the sea, it contains considerable salt,

and one quarter of the weight of its water is solid matter,

its specific weight being 1,170, and, after being distilled, 1,000.

Fishes are, of course, unable to live in it, and those which descend

through the Jordan, the Weber, and other streams soon perish.

 

The country around the lake was well cultivated, for the Mormons

are mostly farmers; while ranches and pens for domesticated animals,

fields of wheat, corn, and other cereals, luxuriant prairies,

hedges of wild rose, clumps of acacias and milk-wort,

would have been seen six months later. Now the ground

was covered with a thin powdering of snow.

 

The train reached Ogden at two o’clock, where it rested for six hours,

Mr. Fogg and his party had time to pay a visit to Salt Lake City,

connected with Ogden by a branch road; and they spent two hours

in this strikingly American town, built on the pattern of other cities

of the Union, like a checker-board, “with the sombre sadness of right-angles,”

as Victor Hugo expresses it. The founder of the City of the Saints

could not escape from the taste for symmetry which distinguishes

the Anglo-Saxons. In this strange country, where the people

are certainly not up to the level of their institutions,

everything is done “squarely”—cities, houses, and follies.

 

The travellers, then, were promenading, at three o’clock,

about the streets of the town built between the banks of the

Jordan and the spurs of the Wahsatch Range. They saw few

or no churches, but the prophet’s mansion, the court-house,

and the arsenal, blue-brick houses with verandas and porches,

surrounded by gardens bordered with acacias, palms, and locusts.

A clay and pebble wall, built in 1853, surrounded the town;

and in the principal street were the market and several hotels

adorned with pavilions. The place did not seem thickly populated.

The streets were almost deserted, except in the vicinity of the temple,

which they only reached after having traversed several quarters

surrounded by palisades. There were many women, which was easily

accounted for by the “peculiar institution” of the Mormons;

but it must not be supposed that all the Mormons are polygamists.

They are free to marry or not, as they please; but it is worth noting

that it is mainly the female citizens of Utah who are anxious to marry,

as, according to the Mormon religion, maiden ladies are not admitted

to the possession of its highest joys. These poor creatures seemed

to be neither well off nor happy. Some—the more well-to-do, no doubt—

wore short, open, black silk dresses, under a hood or modest shawl;

others were habited in Indian fashion.

 

Passepartout could not behold without a certain fright these women,

charged, in groups, with conferring happiness on a single Mormon.

His common sense pitied, above all, the husband. It seemed to him

a terrible thing to have to guide so many wives at once across

the vicissitudes of life, and to conduct them, as it were,

in a body to the Mormon paradise with the prospect of seeing them

in the company of the glorious Smith, who doubtless was the chief ornament

of that delightful place, to all eternity. He felt decidedly repelled

from such a vocation, and he imagined—perhaps he was mistaken—

that the fair ones of Salt Lake City cast rather alarming glances

on his person. Happily, his stay there was but brief. At four the party

found themselves again at the station, took their places in the train,

and the whistle sounded for starting. Just at the moment, however,

that the locomotive wheels began to move, cries of “Stop! stop!” were heard.

 

Trains, like time and tide, stop for no one. The gentleman

who uttered the cries was evidently a belated Mormon. He was

breathless with running. Happily for him, the station had neither

gates nor barriers. He rushed along the track, jumped on the rear

platform of the train, and fell, exhausted, into one of the seats.

 

Passepartout, who had been anxiously watching this amateur gymnast,

approached him with lively interest, and learned that he had taken flight

after an unpleasant domestic scene.

 

When the Mormon had recovered his breath, Passepartout ventured

to ask him politely how many wives he had; for, from the manner

in which he had decamped, it might be thought that he had twenty at least.

 

“One, sir,” replied the Mormon, raising his arms heavenward

—“one, and that was enough!”