ham is careful to prevent us from being annoyed by the children. Her husband started on a mission to Australia, a few days before our arrival, and she is now the head of the family. She is a veritable Yankee housekeeper, active and managing-her table is exquisitely neat, and provided with the best. Such butter we never tasted before-it has a peculiar sweetness derived from the bunch-grass, which is not to be found in the States.

Mr. F. has made our room his office; a very pleasant arrangement for me, as it saves me from being left alone during the day; and I am in a fair way of becoming acquainted with all the dignitaries of the Mormon empire, who come in on business or ceremony. After any one has been in, I take pains to inquire into his history, and especially whether he has more than one wife. These extra wives are known by sundry designations-some call them 66 spirituals," others, sealed ones;" our landlady is fond of calling them "fixins," and the tone in which she brings it out is in the last degree contemptuous, and makes me laugh every time I hear it. It seems these left-hand marriages are termed sealings; the woman is said to be sealed to the man-a term in Mormon theology, of which I do not yet understand the application: nor do I yet know what is meant by "spirituals."

A man by the name of Wells, who was until lately the Private Secretary of the Governor, has called a number of times to urge the payment of certain claims which Mr. F. is not willing to allow. He has a cast in one eye which gives him a sinister look; and, after I learned that he had six wives, all living in common in one house, like so many brutes, the man looked perfectly hideous to me. I was amused at the persuasive and seductive manner in which he urged payment contending that the Government would not allow their officer to suffer, even if it was not strictly according to law; and when this did not make the desired impression, he manifested some angry impatience, which, of course, only made matters worse. One evening Mr. F. drew him into conversation in regard to the settlement of the Territory by the Mormons, and notwithstanding my strong dislike, I could not help being interested in his account of their troubles with the "Utes," as the Indians around here are called. Wells, it seems, acted as the leader of the saints

in this Indian war. They came to an open rupture with these miserable natives in the winter of 1850, and killed some of them in various skirmishes. He said it was very similar to chasing wild beasts, and that they would often stumble upon the poor creatures while burrowed, as it were, in the thick grass, and concealed in clumps of willows. They captured quite a number of squaws and children, and provided for them till spring-some of the squaws, however, stole away and lay in the hot-spring lake, near the city, to keep warm-just keeping their heads out of water, and in this condition they would catch the wild fowl swimming around them and devour them raw.

One

A man by the name of Clawson came in with Wells a number of times. of our gentile visitors enlightened us in regard to him. After being married about two years, he had taken in, for his second wife, a girl by the name of Judd. This was accomplished by a regular courtship, carried on with all the little attentions and deference usually paid by love-stricken swains; but, during this process, his young wife would often be detected, at their convivial assemblies, weeping most bitterly. Punishment will no doubt come in due season; but justice, in this instance, seems amazing slow.

ble.

I would have it swift and terri

In addition to these calls from the masculine portion of the community, which promise to be of so much interest, our boarding-house is a frequent resort for some of the poor "spirituals," to whom Mrs. Farnham furnishes little odd jobs, to enable them to eke out a scanty living. I have already managed to obtain from one of these miserable creatures a sad picture of the state of affairs in her household. There are three wives in the family, who being in a regular strife for the mastery, and having no common interest, every thing is out of joint. At first I found it difficult to approach her, but, by a little tact, I overcame her reserve; and the fount once unsealed, she poured forth her troubles. She is a wretched specimen of a woman, poorly dressed, poorly fed, and exhibits a sense of degradation. In this particular case, the first wife had revenged herself to some extent, by managing to make drudges of the other two.

I must not forget to mention, that a

man called soon after our arrival, and introduced himself as a Mr. Colborn, from Cayuga county, in New York, and said his wife was one of the Ozmuns in Tompkins county. We were, of course, pleased to see a man from so near home he seemed almost like an acquaintance. He appears very simple, complained much of poverty and sickness, and my sympathies were strongly excited for him.

Among the physical curiosities of this wonderful region, are two thermal springs -one called the "hot spring," about three miles from the northern limits of the city-and the "warm spring," two and a half miles nearer. This latter they have conducted in pipes to a bathing-house, to which we paid a visit one day last week. The building is large, and originally intended for a hotel; but as the emigrants to California and Oregon, from which its principal patronage was to be derived, came into the city on the eastern and southern side, they were caught up by private boarding-houses, and it has fallen into decay.

We found it very much dilapidatedthe doors from their hinges, and the tubs leaking-and it was even difficult to secure the necessary privacy. A part of the house was occupied by a family, or, rather, by two families, for there was a father with two wives, and his son with two more. On entering their room to get access to the baths, I observed the elder of the two men looked very much crippled. I questioned him like a true Yankee, and found that he had been a sufferer at Nauvoo. In talking about it, he manifested such a vindictive and savage spirit against the gentiles, that I should be afraid to meet him alone, and was glad to put an end to the colloquy. A good natured young woman, with a baby in her arms, waited upon me. She proved to be one of the wives of the young man, and by further inquiry, I drew forth that they had both been married to him at the same time, so that neither could claim the precedence. You will ask whether such things can be? Yes, they can be with just such women. She was one of those good-natured, stupid fools, that

would gulp down the most preposterous proposition, merely saying, perhaps, "Du tell!" or "You don't say so!" or making some similar remark. I am quite ready to conclude that a large portion of female Mormonism is made up of similar materials.

After fairly getting into the water, I found the bathing delightful. The temperature must have been as high as one hundred, and the water was very dense and perfectly clear. We walked some distance further to the spring itself, at the foot of the mountain, and found an immense rush of water, forming large pools by the side of the road, and smoking as if ready to boil; and the ground was coated with the salts with which the water is impregnated. An Irishman was there with one foot in the current which gurgled from the fountain, trying to cure some real or imaginary evil. Like most Paddies, he gave us a copious flood of the brogue. He recounted over the many virtues of the spring, making it fully equal to the blarney stone of ould Ireland, and among other things, he said, "the likes of it for soup was unknownst intirely, because it gave such an illigant flavor." This is the only Irish specimen we have seen, and, as we are told there are very few in the valley, we hope to meet him again.

Day before yesterday, Mr. F. received a note from the Governor, requesting him to come and see him on business relating to the Legislative Assembly, which is to meet early next month; and apologising for not calling, himself, on the ground of illness. He went, as requested, to the Governor's house, and found him crouching over the fire, with his cloak and hat on, complaining of "mountain fever." After a little time, Mrs. Young (the real Mrs. Young) came in, and was introduced, and appeared agreeable and conversable. Among other things, she expressed a wish to call on me, which was, of course, duly responded to. So I am to receive a call from the Governor's lady before calling on her, and this relieves me on a point of etiquette, about which I was somewhat perplexed.

ΟΝ

the first discovery of the northern coasts of North America, whether of Greenland, Labrador, the present British Provinces, or the United States, nothing, in the first instance, so much attracted the admiration of the discoverers as the immense profusion of animal life which teemed in all the littoral waters, the shoal places of the ocean itself, the estuaries, the river courses, and, as they were subsequently and successively discovered, the interior streams and inland lakes of the virgin continent.

The Norsemen, who, beyond a doubt, were the first visitors of America, at least since the Christian era, spoke with scarce less enthusiasm of the shoals of salmon-a fish with which they were well acquainted, as swarming in their own wild Norwegian fiords and riversthan of the grapes and maize of Vinland -fruits of the earth which, denied to the rigors of their native climate, they had yet learned to know and value, by their inroads on the sunny shores of southern France, and the vintage-laden soil of Italy and the Sicilian islands.

Within two years after Sebastian Cabot's discovery of Newfoundland, in the year 1500, sea-fisheries were established on the coast and banks of that island; and these fisheries "formed the first link between Europe and North America, and for a century almost the only one."*

The gallant St. Malousin mariner, Jacques Cartier, the discoverer and namer of the bays of Gaspé and Chaleurs, of the St. Lawrence and the isle of Mont Real, was forcibly struck, as he could not fail to be, by the innumerable multitudes of salmon and sea-trout with which those waters are literally alive during the season-since, after above two centuries, during which the reckless extravagance and wanton cruelty of the white settler, more than his greed (for he has slaughtered at all seasons, even when the fish is worthless), have waged a war of extermination on the tribe, their numbers still defy calculation, and afford a principal source

* Hildreth's Hist. U. S., vol. i., p.

37.

of rich, cheap, and abundant nutriment to the colonists, as well as the material for a profitable export trade.

Farther to the west, the waters of all the New England rivers-the mighty flow of the Penobscot, the silvery Kennebeck, the tumultuous Androscoggin, the meadowy Connecticut, so far as to the lordly Hudson and the rivers of New Jersey, which enter into its beautiful bay-were found by the first settlers to abound with the sea-salmon; and to their plenteous supply the early Puritan settlers, in no small degree, owed their preservation during the hard and trying times which followed their first attempts at colonization. That the Delaware, likewise, abounded in this noble fish, can in no manner be doubted, though we are not at present prepared to show, from the record, that such was the case; for, of all the rivers on this side of the continent, there is no water so well adapted to their habitation, both from the absence of any material fall or chute, which should hinder their ascent, and from the purity and gravel bottom of its own upper waters, as well as of its numerous tributaries, all of which are admirably qualified for the propagation of this species.

South of the Capes of the Delaware, it would seem probable that the true sea-salmon never existed; in the first place, because it appears that, on this continent, the thirty-eighth degree of north latitude is, on both coasts, the extreme southern limit of the true seasalmon; and, secondly, because, in the Susquehanna and rivers still further south, even so far as the Virginian waters, the first discoverers, who had learned, from the accounts of the northern adventurers, to look for salmon in all American streams, gave the name of white salmon to a fish which, in the absence of the salmo salar, they did find in the estuaries they entered; and which still, though belonging to a totally distinct family, being a percoid fish, gristes salmocides, or in the vernacular, the growler, retains the honors of its unduly-applied title.

Gradually, as the white man has obtained foothold on the soil, and as his civilization, his agriculture, and his manufactures have occupied the hunting-grounds of the aborigines, the tribes of earth, air, and water, with which bountiful Nature had filled the forests, the fields, the streams, the lakes, the ocean bays, to overflowing-a cheap, luxurious, superabundant, self-reproducing nutriment for millions of inhabitants-have, like the red foresters, who subsisted on them, become wholly extinct, have been driven and pent up into remote, inaccessible resorts, or are merely existing, by a last-expiring sufferance, on the verge of absolute extermination.

Of these animals, some have, undoubtedly, passed away of necessity, and in accordance with an invariable law of nature, which precludes the possibility of these creatures existing, side by side, with a dense population, and in the midst of a highly-cultivated country.

The deer, the elk, the moose, the cariboo, the buffalo, require the free range of untrodden woodlands, or vast prairies, for their residence and support; and as the ax of the white settler has prostrated the wide forest tracts, and his fences and ploughed fields have encroached upon the interminable grassy plains, which for centuries afforded them shelter, shade, and pasture, they naturally receded before the foot of the invader, and have become rare and scarce, in proportion as the spots where they can roam and feed unmolested have become few and far between.

Still, in the destruction even of these, the murderous propensities of the white settler, wantonly and uselessly indulged, have unduly hurried the progress of events, which must have come soon enough in nature. As regards the moose, the elk, and the cariboo, little, perhaps, has been done in the way of extermination, that could have been avoided; for, so wild and shy are these great forest-haunters, that they immediately avoid the vicinity of man and shelter themselves in places as yet sacred from his intrusion.

The deer, which once abounded in every wooded range of hills, from one

end of the continent to the other, which are by no means so shy as to eschew the vicinity of man, if not unduly persecuted at all seasons-and for which there are everywhere, even in the most highly cultivated States, ample spaces of connected forest-land stretching over all the spurs and branches of the Alleghany chain, have been almost entirely exterminated in the States of the Atlantic seaboard; and the process of wanton destruction is still in ruthless progress. Whenever a winter of unusual severity occurs, with deep snow-drifts and treacherous crusts, hundreds and thousands of these helpless, unresisting animals are knocked on the head by pursuers mounted on snow-shoes, at a time when their flesh is lean and dry, and even their hides are nearly valueless, for the mere love of what their slayers call sport.

The buffalo, for whose support, if left to the ways of nature, and slain only in moderation-as required for the rational use of man-the prairies yet unused, which will not in the course of nature be used during above one generation. would suffice yet for a century—are slaughtered by tens of thousands, merely for the robes and the tongues—the carcasses being left to the wolf, the raven and the coyote, and their bones whitening the wilderness, and marking the trail of the transient white man.

In respect of fish, however, no natural cause prevents their co-existence, in the greatest abundance, with man in his highest state of civilization and refinement, in the midst of the greatest agricultural or manufacturing opulence.

Easily scared, in the first instance. by unusual sights-for it has been, we think, thoroughly proved by a series of curious and interesting experiments on the trout, that most kinds of fish are insensible to sounds,*-the natives of the water speedily become reconciled to appearances, which become habitual, when found to be connected with no danger.

Consequently, large cities on their river margins, great dams and piles of buildings projected into the waters, the dash of mill-wheels, and the paddles of steamers, have no perceptible effect in deterring fish from frequenting otherwise favorable localities. Every angler knows

that the pool beneath the mill-wheel is, nine times out of ten, the resort of the largest and fattest brook trout in the stream. Every shad-fisher knows that the growth of Philadelphia and New York has in no wise affected the run of shad up the Delaware or Hudson, how much soever his own indiscriminate destruction of them by stake-nets, by the seine, and, worst of all, by capturing the spent-fish, when returning weak and worthless to the sea, after spawning, and known as fall shad, may have decimated their numbers, and may threaten their speedy annihilation. It is well known, that the vast saw-mills at Indian Old-town, on the Penobscot, with their continual clash and clang and their glaring lights, blazing the night through, have no effect in preventing the ascent of the salmon into the upper waters of that noble river, wherein they still breed abundantly. It has been proved, beyond the possibility of question, by the vast increase of salmon in the Tay, the Forth, the Clyde, and other Scottish rivers, since the enforcement of protective laws by the British Fishery Boards, that the continual transit of steamers to and fro has no injurious effect on their migrations.

In a word, it is fully established, that, if care be taken to prevent and restrain the erection of obstacles to the ascent of these fish from the salt into the fresh waters, for the deposition of their spawn, and if protective laws be rigidly enforced, to render impossible the wanton destruction of the breeding fish on their spawning beds, and during the season when their flesh is not only valueless but actually unwholesome, while they are engaged in the process of breeding, or are returning, spent, lean, large-headed, flaccid, and ill-conditioned to the sea, for the purpose of recuperating their health and reinvigorating their system, by the marine food, whence they derive their excellencethere is no limit to their reproduction or increase, allowing every fair and reasonable use of them, whether for local consumption or foreign export.

It cannot be said, that, as a nation, we are either ignorant or regardless of the national value of fisheries; when, but a few months since, we were in a state of extreme agitation and excitement, and on the point of rushing into hostilities with the most powerful maritime nation on earth, for the asser

tion of certain questionable rights of fishery-rights, in fact, according to the opinions of some of our most able and responsible statesmen, which were, as per se, entirely untenable-on the coasts and within the bays of a neighboring foreign province.

And yet, were we as ignorant thereof as the most benighted of savages, we could not be more utterly regardless of the mine of wealth, richer, surer, and far more cheaply obtained than the boasted gold of California, neglected at our very doors, in every river mouth from the Delaware to the St. Croix, along our whole eastern Atlantic seaboard, which might, with a minimum of legislative aid and protection, and the exertion of the smallest portion of common sense, self-restraint, and foresight, on the part of our maritime and rural population, afford cheap and delicious food to hungry thousands, and a large source of national wealth, as a material for export, and stimulant to commercial enterprise.

Within the memory of man, the Connecticut river swarmed with salmon; and it is stated, in the Hartford Courant, that "it is well known that individuals, coming in from the country for a load of shad, could not purchase any, unless they would consent to take so many salmon off the hands of the fishermen. They were often sold as low as two coppers the pound."

"The cause of the destruction of the salmon was not," continues this writer, so much the numbers caught by the fishermen, as the obstructions which the dam at Enfield placed in the way of the descent of the young fish to the salt water. A resident of Enfield, when a boy, distinctly remembers seeing, in a very dry summer, when the water hardly flowed over that dam, thousands of very young salmon, on the upper side, prevented from going down, all of which died there in a short time."

Undoubtedly, this writer, though there is a mixture of error in his statement, has arrived at the gist of the matter, when he states the cause of the destruction of the salmon to arise from the obstruction opposed by mill-dams to the migrations of the fish.

It is, however, the stoppage of the ascent of the breeding fish, not that of the descent of the young fry, which is