186 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 



The city of Nauvoo soon became a large and imposing 

 settlement. An enormous building, called the Temple oi 

 Zion, was erected, half church, half hotel, in which Joe 

 Smith and the other prophets resided and large store- 

 houses were connected with it, in which the goods and 

 chattels belonging to the community were kept for the 

 common good. 



However, here, as everywhere else, they were continually 

 quarrelling with their neighbours ; and as their numbers 

 increased, so did their audacity. A regular Mormon 

 militia was again organised and armed, under the command 

 of experienced officers who had joined the sect ; and now 

 the authority of the state government was openly defied. 

 In consequence, the executive took measures to put down 

 the nuisance, and a regular war commenced, and was car- 

 ried on for some time, with no little bloodshed on both 

 sides ; and this armed movement is known in the United 

 States as the Mormon war. The Mormons, however, who, 

 it seemed, were much better skilled in the use of the tongue 

 than the rifle, succumbed : the city of Nauvoo was taken, 

 Joe Smith and other ringleading prophets captured ; and 

 the former, in an attempt to escape from his place of con- 

 finement, was seized and shot. The Mormons declare he 

 had long foretold his own fate ; and that when the rifles of 

 the firing party who were his executioners were levelled at 

 the prophet's breast, a flash of lightning struck the weapons 

 from their hands, and blinded for a time the eyes of the 

 sacrilegious soldiers. 



With the death of Joe Smith the prestige of the Mor- 

 mon cause declined ; but still thousands of proselytes 

 joined them annually, and at last the state took measures 

 to remove them altogether, as a body, from the country. 



Once again they fled, ac they themselves term it, before 

 the persecutions of the ungodly ! But this time their 

 migration was far beyond the reach of their enemies, and 

 their intention was to place between them the impassable 

 barrier of the Rocky Mountains, and to seek a home and 

 resting-place in the remote regions of the Far West. 



This, the most extraordinary migration of modern times 



