Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet Part 32

"You are quite certain that you can bring this man to life again?"

"We are."

"How do you know that you can?"

"We have just received a revelation from the Lord, informing us that we can."

"Are you quite sure that the revelation was from the Lord?"

"Yes; we cannot be mistaken about it."

"Does your power to raise this man to life again depend upon the particular nature of his disease? or could you now bring any dead man to life?"

"It makes no difference to us; we could bring any corpse to life."

"Well, if this man had been killed, and one of his arms cut off, could you bring him to life, and also restore to him his arm?"

"Certainly! there is no limit to the power given us by the Lord. It would make no difference, even if both his arms and legs were cut off."

"Could you restore him, if his head had been cut off?"

"Certainly we could!"

"Well," said the farmer, with a quiet smile upon his features, "I do not doubt the truth of what such holy men a.s.sert; but I am desirous that my neighbours here should be fully converted, by having the miracle performed in the completest manner possible. So, by your leave, if it makes no difference whatever, I will proceed to cut off the head of this corpse."

Accordingly, he produced a huge and well-sharpened broad axe from beneath his coat, which he swung above his head, and was, apparently, about to bring it down upon the neck of the corpse, when, lo and behold!

to the amazement of all present, the dead man started up in great agitation, and swore that, "by h.e.l.l and jingo," he would not have his head cut off, for any consideration whatever.

The company immediately seized the Mormons, and soon made them confess that the pretended dead man was also a Mormon elder, and that they had sent him to the farmer's house, with directions to die there at a particular hour, when they would drop in, as if by accident, and perform a miracle that would astonish everybody. The farmer, after giving the impostors a severe chastis.e.m.e.nt, let them depart to practise their _humbug_ in some other quarter.

These two "_Elders of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints_,"

were honest Joe and his worthy _compeer_ and coadjutor, Sidney Rigdon.

CHAPTER FORTY ONE.

The day of the fis.h.i.+ng at length arrived; our party of ladies and gentlemen, with the black cooks and twenty slaves, started two hours before sunrise, and, after a smart ride of some twelve miles, we halted before a long row of tents, which had been erected for the occasion, on the sh.o.r.es of one of these numerous and beautiful western lakes. Fifty negroes were already on the spot, some cutting wood for fuel, some preparing breakfast, while others made ready the baits and lines, or cleaned empty barrels, in which our intended victims were to be salted.

We scarcely had had time to look around us, when, from twenty different quarters, we beheld the approach of as many parties, who had been invited to share the sport. We greeted them planter fas.h.i.+on;--"Are you hungry, eh, eh?--Sam, Napoleon, Was.h.i.+ngton, Caesar--quick--the breakfast."

For several days previous, all the creeks of the neighbourhood had been drained of their cray-fish, minnows, and sh.e.l.l-fish. All the dug-outs and canoes from every stream thirty miles round had also been dragged to the lake, and it was very amusing to see a fleet of eighty boats and canoes of every variety, in which we were about to embark to prosecute our intentions against the unsuspecting inhabitants of the water.

After a hearty, though somewhat hasty meal, we proceeded to business, every white man taking with him a negro, to bait his line and unhook the fish; the paddles were soon put in motion, and the canoes, keeping a distance of fifty yards from each other, having now reached the deepest part of the lake, bets were made as to who would pull up the first fish, the ladies on sh.o.r.e watching the sport, and the caldrons upon the fire ready to receive the first victims. I must not omit to mention, that two of the larger canoes, manned only by negroes, were ordered to pull up and down the line of fis.h.i.+ng-boats and canoes, to take out the fish as they were captured.

At a signal given by the ladies, the lines were thrown into the lake, and, almost at the same moment, a deafening hurrah of a hundred voices announced that all the baits had been taken before reaching the bottom, every fisherman imagining that he had won his bet. The winner, however, could never be ascertained, and n.o.body gave it a second thought, all being now too much excited with the sport. The variety of the fish was equal to the rapidity with which they were taken: ba.s.ses, perch, sun-fish, buffaloes, trouts, and twenty other sorts. In less than half an hour my canoe was full to sinking; and I should certainly have sunk with my cargo, had it not been most opportunely taken out by one of the spare boats. All was high glee on sh.o.r.e and on the lake, and the scene was now and then still diversified by comic accidents, causing the more mirth, as there was no possibility of danger.

The canoe next to me was full to the gunwale, which was not two inches above water: it contained the English traveller and a negro, who was quite an original in his way. As fish succeeded to fish, their position became exceedingly ludicrous: the canoe was positively sinking, and they were l.u.s.tily calling for a.s.sistance. The spare boat approached rapidly, and had neared them to within five yards, when the Englishman's line was suddenly jerked by a very heavy fish, and so unexpectedly, that the sportsman lost his equilibrium and fell upon the larboard side of the canoe.

The negro, wis.h.i.+ng to restore the equilibrium, threw his weight on the opposite side; unluckily, this had been the simultaneous idea of his white companion, who also rolled over the fish to starboard. The canoe turned the turtle with them, and away went minnows, crawfish, lines, men, and all. Everybody laughed most outrageously, as the occupants of the canoe re-appeared upon the surface of the water, and made straight for the sh.o.r.e not daring to trust to another canoe after their ducking.

The others continued fis.h.i.+ng till about half-past nine, when the rays of the sun were becoming so powerful as to compel us to seek shelter in the tents.

If the scene on the lake had been exciting, it became not less so on sh.o.r.e, when all the negroes, male and female, crowding together, began to scale, strip, and salt the fish. Each of them had an account to give of some grand fishery, where a monstrous fish, a mile in length, had been taken by some fortunate "Sambo" of the South. The girls gaped with terror and astonishment, the men winking and trying to look grave, while spinning these yarns, which certainly beat all the wonders of the veracious Baron Munchausen.

The call to renew the sport broke off their ludicrous inventions. Our fortune was as great as in the forenoon, and at sunset we returned home, leaving the negroes to salt and pack the fish in barrels, for the supply of the plantation.

A few days afterwards, I bade adieu to Mr Courtenay and his delightful family, and embarked myself and horse on board of one of the steamers bound to St. Louis, which place I reached on the following morning.

St. Louis has been described by so many travellers, that it is quite useless to mention anything about this "queen city of the Mississippi."

I will only observe, that my arrival produced a great sensation among the inhabitants, to whom the traders in the Far West had often told stories about the wealth of the Shoshones. In two or three days, I received a hundred or more applications from various speculators, "to go and kill the Indians in the West, and take away their treasures;" and I should have undoubtedly received ten thousand more, had I not hit upon a good plan to rid myself of all their importunities. I merely sent all the notes to the newspapers as fast as I received them; and it excited a hearty laugh amongst the traders, when thirty letters appeared in the columns, all of them written in the same tenor and style.

One evening I found at the post-office a letter from Joseph Smith himself, in which he invited me to go to him without any loss of time, as the state of affairs having now a.s.sumed a certain degree of importance, it was highly necessary that we should at once come to a common understanding. Nothing could have pleased me more than this communication, and the next morning I started from St. Louis, arriving before noon at St. Charles, a small town upon the Missouri, inhabited almost entirely by French creoles, fur-traders, and trappers. There, for the first time, I saw a steam-ferry, and, to say the truth, I do not understand well how horses and waggons could have been transported over before the existence of steam-boats, as, in that particular spot, the mighty stream rolls its muddy waters with an incredible velocity, forming whirlpools, which seem strong enough to engulf anything that may come into them.

From St. Charles I crossed a hilly land, till I arrived once more upon the Mississippi; but there "the father of the waters" (as the Indians call it) presented an aspect entirely new: its waters, not having yet mixed with those of the Missouri, were quite transparent; the banks, too, were several hundred feet high, and recalled to my mind the countries watered by the Buona Ventura River. For two days I continued my road almost always in sight of the stream, till at last, the ground becoming too broken and hilly, I embarked upon another steam-ferry at Louisiana, a rising and promising village, and landed upon the sh.o.r.es of Illinois, where the level prairies would allow of more rapid travelling.

The state of Missouri, in point of dimensions, is the second state of the Union, being inferior in extent only to Virginia. It extends from 36 degrees to 40 degrees 35 minutes North lat.i.tude, and from 89 degrees 20 minutes to 95 degrees West longitude, having an area of about 68,500 square miles. Its boundaries, as fixed by the Const.i.tution, are a line drawn from a point in the middle of the Mississippi, in 36 degrees North lat.i.tude, and along that parallel, west to its intersection, a meridian line, pa.s.sing through the mouth of the Kansas. Thence, the western boundary was originally at that meridian; but, by act of Congress in 1836, the triangular tract between it and the Missouri, above the mouth of the Kansas, was annexed to the state. On the north, the parallel of lat.i.tude which pa.s.ses through the rapids of the river Desmoines, forms the boundary between that river and the Missouri.

The surface of that portion of the state which lies north of the Missouri is, in general, moderately undulating, consisting of an agreeable interchange of gentle swells and broad valleys, and rarely, though occasionally, rugged, or rising into hills of much elevation.

With the exception of a narrow strips of woodland along the water-courses, almost the whole of this region is prairie, at least nine-tenths being wholly dest.i.tute of trees. The alluvial patches or river-bottoms are extensive, particularly on the Missouri, and generally of great fertility; and the soil of the upland is equal, if not superior, to that of any other upland tract in the United States. The region south of the Missouri River and west of the Osage, is of the same description; the northern and western Missouri country is most delightful, a soil of inexhaustible fertility and a salubrious climate, rendering it a most desirable and pleasant residence; but south-east of the latter river, the state is traversed by numerous ridges of the Ozark mountains, and the surface is here highly broken and rugged.

This mountainous tract has a breadth of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles; but although it often shoots up into precipitous peaks, it is believed that they rarely exceed two thousand feet in height; no accurate measurements of their elevation have, however, been made, and little is known of the course and mutual relations of the chains. The timber found here is pitch-pine, shrub oaks, cedar, etcetera, indicative of the poverty of the soil; in the uplands of the rest of the state, hickory, post-oak, and white oaks, etcetera, are the prevailing growth; and in river-bottoms, the cotton tree, sycamore or b.u.t.ton-wood, maple, ash, walnut, etcetera, predominate. The south-eastern corner of the state, below Cape Girardeau, and east of the Black River, is a portion of the immense inundated region which borders the Arkansas. A considerable part of this tract is indeed above the reach of the floods, but these patches are isolated and inaccessible, except by boats, during the rise of the waters.

My friend Mr Courtenay penetrated these swamps with three Indians and two negroes. His companions were bogged and lost; he returned, having killed seven fine elks and two buffaloes. Some of these mighty animals have been breeding there for a long while, undisturbed by man.

The state of Missouri is abundantly supplied with navigable channels, affording easy access to all parts. The Mississippi washes the eastern border, by the windings of the stream, for a distance of about four hundred and seventy miles. Above St. Genevieve, it flows for the most part between high and abrupt cliffs of limestone, rising to an elevation of from one hundred to four hundred feet above the surface of the river; sometimes separated from it by bottoms of greater or less width, and at others springing up abruptly from the water's edge. A few miles below Cape Girardeau, and about thirty-five miles above the mouth of the Ohio, are the rocky ledges, called the Little and Grand Chain; and about half-way between that point and St. Genevieve, is the Grand Tower, one of the wonders of the Mississippi. It is a stupendous pile of rocks, of a conical form, about one hundred and fifty feet high, and one hundred feet circ.u.mference at its base, rising up out of the bed of the river.

It seems, in connection with the rocky sh.o.r.es on both sides, to have been opposed, at some former period, as a barrier to the flow of the Mississippi, which must here have had a perpendicular fell of more than one hundred feet.

The princ.i.p.al tributaries of the Mississippi, with the exception of the Missouri, are the Desmoines, Wyacond, Fabius, Salt, and Copper Rivers, above that great stream, and the Merrimac, St. Francis, and White River below; the two last pa.s.sing into Arkansas. Desmoines, which is only a boundary stream, is navigable one hundred and seventy miles, and Salt River, whose northern sources are in Iowa, and southern in Boone county, and which takes its name from the salt licks or salines on its borders, may be navigated by steam-boats up to Florida (a small village); that is to say, ninety-five or a hundred miles. The Riviere au Cuivre, or Copper River, is also a navigable stream; but the navigation of all these rivers is interrupted by ice in winter, and by shoals and bars in the dry season.

The Missouri river flows through the state for a distance of about six hundred miles; but although steam-boats have ascended it two thousand five hundred miles from its mouth, its navigation is rendered difficult and dangerous by sand-bars, falling banks, snags, and s.h.i.+fting channels.

The bank of the Mississippi river, on the Illinois side, is not by far so picturesque as the country I have just described, but its fertility is astonis.h.i.+ng. Consequently, the farms and villages are less scattered, and cities, built with taste and a great display of wealth, are found at a short distance one from the other. Quincy I may mention, among others, as being a truly beautiful town, and quite European in its style of structure and neatness. Elegant fountains are pouring their cool waters at the end of every row of houses; some of the squares are magnificent, and, as the town is situated upon a hill several hundred feet above the river, the prospect is truly grand.

At every place where I stopped between St. Louis and Quincy, I always heard the Mormons abused and spoken of as a set of scoundrels, but from Quincy to Nauvoo the reports were totally different. The higher or more enlightened cla.s.ses of the people have overlooked the petty tricks of the Mormon leaders, to watch with more accuracy the advance and designs of Mormonism. In Joe Smith they recognise a great man, a man of will and energy, one who has the power of carrying every thing before him, and they fear him accordingly.

On leaving Quincy. I travelled about seventy miles through a country entirely flat, but admirably cultivated. I pa.s.sed through several little villages, and at noon of the second day I reached my destination.

CHAPTER FORTY TWO.

Nauvoo, the holy city of the Mormons, and present capital of their empire, is situated in the north-western part of Illinois, on the east bank of the Mississippi, in lat.i.tude 40 degrees 33 minutes North; it is bounded on the north, south, and west by the river, which there forms a large curve, and is nearly two miles wide. Eastward of the city is a beautiful undulating prairie; it is distant ten miles from Fort Madison, in Iowa, and more than two hundred from St. Louis.

Before the Mormons gathered there, the place was named _Commerce_, as I have already said, and was but a small and obscure village of some twenty houses; so rapidly, however, have they acc.u.mulated, that there are now, within four years of their first settlement, upwards of fifteen thousand inhabitants in the city, and as many more in its immediate vicinity.

The surface of the ground upon which Nauvoo is built is very uneven, though there are no great elevations. A few feet below the soil is a vast bed of limestone, from which excellent building material can be quarried, to almost any extent. A number of _tumuli_, or ancient mounds, are found within the limits of the city, proving it to have been a place of some importance with the former inhabitants of the country.

The s.p.a.ce comprised within the city limits is about four miles in its extreme length, and three in its breadth; but is very irregular in its outline, and does not cover so much ground as the above measurement would seem to indicate.

The city is regularly laid out, the streets crossing each other at right angles, and generally of considerable length, and of convenient width.