rring
way through the brains of external enemies. They are the Heaven-elected
assassins of Mormonism,--the butchers by divine right. Porter Rockwell
has slain his forty men. This is historical. His probable private
victims amount to as many more. He wears his hair braided behind, and
done up in a knot with a back-comb, like a woman's. He has a face full
of bull-dog courage,--but vastly good-natured, and without a bad trait
in it. I went out riding with him on the Fourth of July, and enjoyed his
society greatly,--though I knew that at a word from Brigham he would cut
my throat in as matter-of-fact a style as if I had been a calf instead
of an author. But he would have felt no unkindness toward me on that
account. I understood his anomaly perfectly, and found him one of the
pleasantest murderers I ever met. He was mere executive force, from
which the lever, conscience, had suffered entire disjunction, being in
the hand of Brigham. He was everywhere known as the Destroying Angel,
but he seemed to have little disagreement with his toddy, and took his
meals regularly. He has two very comely and pleasant wives. Brigham has
about seventy, Heber about thirty. The seventy of Brigham do not include
those spiritually married, or "sealed" to him, who may never see him
again after the ceremony is performed in his back-office. These often
have temporal husbands, and marry Brigham only for the sake of belonging
to his lordly establishment in heaven.

Salt Lake City, Brigham told me, he believed to contain sixteen thousand
inhabitants. Its houses are built generally of adobe or wood,--a few of
stone,--and though none of them are architecturally ambitious, almost
all have delightful gardens. Both fruit- and shade-trees are plenty and
thrifty. Indeed, from the roof of the Opera-House the city looks fairly
embowered in green. It lies very picturesquely on a plain quite
embasined among mountains, and the beauty of its appearance is much
heightened by the streams which run on both sides of all the broad
streets, brought down from the snow-peaks for purposes of irrigation.
The Mormons worship at present in a plain, low building,--I think, of
adobe,--called the Tabernacle, save during the intensely hot weather,
when an immense booth of green branches, filled with benches,
accommodates them more comfortably. Brigham is erecting a Temple of
magnificent granite, (much like the Quincy,) about two hundred feet long
by one hundred and twenty-five f