Along the thousand miles of
road from the Missouri River to the Great Lake, there stand, thicker
than milestones, memorials of those who failed on the way. A rough
board, a pile of stones, a grave ransacked by wolves, crown many a swell
of the bottom-lands along the Platte; and across the broad belt of
mountains there is no spot so desolate as to be unmarked by one of these
monuments of the march of Mormonism.
As these difficulties of transit subside under the surge of population
toward the new State of Oregon, or to the gold-diggings on the
head-waters of the South Fork of the Platte, an element must permeate
Utah which would be fatal to the supremacy of the Church. That depends,
as has been so often repeated, upon isolation. Already the presence of
the army with its crowd of unruly dependents has begun to disturb it.
In the trail of the troops, like sparks shed from a rocket, a legion
of mail-stations and trading-posts have sprung up, which materially
facilitate communication with the East. A horseman, starting now from
Fort Leavenworth, with a good animal, can ride to Salt Lake City,
sleeping under cover every night; while in July, 1857, when the army
commenced its march from the frontier, there were stretches of more than
three hundred miles without a single white inhabitant.
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