MORMON BED-ROOMS. 123 



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from every crack and knot-hole. During this season of compara- 

 tive inaction, we received from the authorities and citizens of the 

 community every kindness that the most warmhearted hospitality 

 could dictate ; and no effort was spared to render us as comfort- 

 able as their own limited means would admit. Indeed, we were 

 much better lodged than many of our neighbours ; for, as has been 

 previously observed, very many families were obliged still to lodge 

 wholly or in part in their wagons, which, being covered, served, 

 when taken off from the wheels and set upon the ground, to make 

 bedrooms, of limited dimensions it is true, but yet exceedingly 

 comfortable. Many of these were comparatively large and commo- 

 dious, and, when carpeted and furnished with a little stove, formed 

 an additional apartment or back building to the small cabin, with 

 which they frequently communicated by a door. It certainly argued 

 a high toiie of morals and an habitual observance of good order and 

 decorum, to find women and children thus securely slumbering in 

 the midst of a large city, with no protection from midnight moles- 

 tation other than a wagon-cover of linen and the aegis of the law. 

 In the very next enclosure to that occupied by our party, a whole 

 family of children had no other shelter than one of these wagons, 

 where they slept all the winter, literally out of doors, there being 

 no communication whatever with the inside of their parents' house. 



The founding, within the space of three years, of a large and 

 flourishing community, upon a spot so remote from the abodes of 

 man, so completely shut out by natural barriers from the rest of 

 the world, so entirely unconnected by watercourses with either of 

 the oceans that wash the shores of this continent — a country offer- 

 ing no advantages of inland navigation or of foreign commerce, but, 

 on the contrary, isolated by vast uninhabitable deserts, and only 

 to be reached by long, painful, and often hazardous journeys by 

 land — presents an anomaly so very peculiar, that it deserves more 

 than a passing notice. In this young and progressive country of 

 ours, where cities grow up in a day, and states spring into exist- 

 ence in a year, the successful planting of a colony, where the 

 natural advantages have been such as to hold out the promise of 

 adequate reward to the projectors, would have excited no surprise ; 

 but the success of an enterprise under circumstances so at variance 

 with all our preconceived ideas of its probability, may well be con- 

 sidered as one of the most remarkable incidents of the present 

 age. 



A brief reference to the early history of this people, and to the 



