CHAPTER XLII.

Nauvoo, the holy city of the Mormons, and present capital of their empire, is situated in the north-western part of Illinois, on the east bank of the Mississippi, in lat. 40 deg. 35’ N.; it is bounded on the north, south, and west by the river, which there forms a large curve, and is nearly two miles wide.  Eastward of the city is a beautiful undulating prairie; it is distant ten miles from Fort Madison, in Iowa, and more than two hundred from St. Louis.

Before the Mormons gathered there, the place was named Commerce, as I have already said, and was but a small and obscure village of some twenty houses; so rapidly, however, have they accumulated, that there are now, within four years of their first settlement, upwards of fifteen thousand inhabitants in the city, and as many more in its immediate vicinity.

The surface of the ground upon which Nauvoo is built is very uneven, though there are no great elevations.  A few feet below the soil is a vast bed of limestone, from which excellent building material can be quarried, to almost any extent.  A number of tumuli, or ancient mounds, are found within the limits of the city, proving it to have been a place of some importance with the former inhabitants of the country.

The space comprised within the city limits is about four miles in its extreme length, and three in its breadth; but is very irregular in its outline, and does not cover so much ground as the above measurement would seem to indicate.

The city is regularly laid out, the streets crossing each other at right angles, and generally of considerable length, and of convenient width.  The majority of the houses are still nothing more than log cabins, but lately a great number of plank and brick houses have been erected.  The chief edifices of Nauvoo are the temple, and an hotel, called the Nauvoo House, but neither of them is yet finished; the latter is of brick, upon a stone foundation, and presents a front of one hundred and twenty feet, by sixty feet deep, and is to be three stories high, exclusive of the basement.  Although intended chiefly for the reception and entertainment of strangers and travellers, it contains, or rather will contain, a splendid suite of apartments for the particular accommodation of the prophet Joe Smith, and his heirs and descendants for ever.

The privilege of this accommodation he pretends was granted to him by the Lord, in a special revelation, on account of his services to the Church.  It is most extraordinary that the Americans, imbued with democratic sentiments and with such an utter aversion to hereditary privileges of any kind, could for a moment be blinded to the selfishness of the prophet, who thus easily provided for himself and his posterity a palace and a maintenance.