Of course, the picture just drawn is of the darkest aspect.  Some trains there were under competent pioneers who knew their job; who were experienced in wilderness travel; who understood better than to chase madly away after every cut-off reported by irresponsible trappers; who comprehended the handling and management of cattle; who, in short, knew wilderness travel.  These came through with only the ordinary hardships.  But take it all in all, the overland trail was a trial by fire.  One gets a notion of its deadliness from the fact that over five thousand people died of cholera alone.  The trail was marked throughout its length by the shallow graves of those who had succumbed.  He who arrived in California was a different person from the one who had started from the East.  Experience had even in so short a time fused his elements into something new.  This alteration must not be forgotten when we turn once more to the internal affairs of the new commonwealth.

CHAPTER VI

THE MORMONS

In the westward overland migration the Salt Lake Valley Mormons played an important part.  These strange people had but recently taken up their abode in the desert.  That was a fortunate circumstance, as their necessities forced them to render an aid to the migration that in better days would probably have been refused.

The founder of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith, Jr., came from a commonplace family.

Apparently its members were ignorant and superstitious.  They talked much of hidden treasure and of supernatural means for its discovery.  They believed in omens, signs, and other superstitions.  As a boy Joseph had been shrewd enough and superstitious enough to play this trait up for all it was worth.  He had a magic peep-stone and a witch-hazel divining-rod that he manipulated so skillfully as to cause other boys and even older men to dig for him as he wished.  He seemed to delight in tricking his companions in various ways, by telling fortunes, reeling off tall yarns, and posing as one possessed of occult knowledge.

According to Joseph’s autobiography, the discovery of the Mormon Bible happened in this wise:  on the night of September 21, 1823, a vision fell upon him; the angel Moroni appeared and directed him to a cave on the hillside; in this cave he found some gold plates, on which were inscribed strange characters, written in what Smith described as “reformed Egyptian”; they were undecipherable except by the aid of a pair of magic peep-stones named Urim and Thummim, delivered him for the purpose by the angel at Palmyra; looking through the hole in these peep-stones, he was able to interpret the gold plates.  This was the skeleton of the story embellished by later ornamentation in the way of golden breastplates, two stones bright and shining, golden plates united at the back by rings, the sword of Laban, square stone boxes, cemented clasps, invisible blows, suggestions of Satan, and similar mummery born from the quickened imagination of a zealot.