| 179 strove to attain a sort of ecstatic climax, a cruel spirit of insulting frolic carried some of them up into the high belfry of the temple steeple, and there, with the wicked childishness of inebriates, they whooped, and shrieked, and beat the drum that I had seen, and rang in charivaric unison their loud-tongued steamboat bell.
"They were, all told, not more than six hundred and forty persons who were thus lying on the river flats. But the Mormons in Nauvoo and its dependencies had been numbered the year before at over twenty thousand. Where were they? They had last been seen, carrying in mournful train their sick and wounded, halt and blind, to disappear behind the western horizon, pursuing the phantom of another home. Hardly anything else was known of them: and people asked with curiosity, 'What had been their fate-what their fortunes?'"- Smucker's History of the Mormons, pp. 217-223.
We will not follow the exodus of this people to the West, where their history is well known. The treatment they had received in the United States was of that character which would impel them to a desire to plunge into the desert beyond the confines of civilization, and leave them in a condition to be easily duped by designing men who would lead them away from oppression and hostile foes, and deceive them if they chose to do so.
(page 179) |
