Rachel Lilian Leland (Andrews) (1857-after 1930) was an American woman raised as a Freethinker – which in Lilian’s case seems chiefly to have meant a disdain for religion, a lack of discipline, and a lifelong devotion (and the money) to doing just as she pleased. What she pleased to do in her early 20s was to travel, on a whim, around the world, by herself. For almost two years she traveled by train, steamship, rickshaw, carriage – whatever – throughout Asia, Europe, North America, and the isles of the sea, and to do it without any traveling companions except those she struck up with by accident, on the road.

In 1890, her letters home to her parents were edited into a book, A Woman’s Journey Around the World Alone. It was a very popular book for its time. One reviewer explained why:

[It] is chiefly interesting for its perfectly frank comments upon everything. They are not the comments which would be made by a particularly cultured observer. “What we are, we see,” is exemplified at length. But they are pretty much what eight-tenths of observers probably think to themselves, but never utter. … It is quite refreshing to dip into such an unconventional book of travel as this.

When this not “particularly cultured observer” came to Utah, she saw scenery and she saw people … and on the basis of her few minutes’ observation, she divined the culture, family relationships, and the innermost thoughts and thwarted dreams of those people.

… We leave the Gunnison River to go plunging down the Black Cañon, following up the Cimarron Creek which has added its waters to the Gunnison, and presently we are out of the mountains and speeding across a vast verdureless billowy plain, hedged around with sharply cut cliffs.

Next morning we find ourselves running through the great Utah Desert, which is bounded by a range of cliffs cut sharply and ridged and guttered as if with rushing water. The sand looks baked and cracked, and is here and there swept up in ridges and hummocks and comes as if by whirlwinds. It has the appearance of having one been a sea.

We see the azure cliffs, and later, Castle Gate, as the two great sandstone pillars guarding the entrance to Price River Cañon are called, and we are in the heart of the Wahsatch Mountains. Having crossed them, we speed again across level plains, bare but for cactus, and the rest of the trip to Salt Lake is marked only by fatigue and dust.

At Salt Lake City, a young married couple and myself, strangers until then, joined forces and took an open tourist car for the beach, to bathe in the Great Salt Lake.

Of course we were on the lookout for Mormons, and eyed with suspicion any man who was accompanied by more than one woman, quite forgetful of the fact that we were two young women with one unfortunate young man between us, and therefore, by the same rule, clearly Mormons. But for the most part we saw women and children together, and a few men and young boys. Two boys behind me were telling of an acquaintance’s second marriage, and how the first wife had taken it, and the progression of another courtship, and whether “she” cared anything about “him” or not. Two women and three children sat in front of me, a similar family in front of them, and again in front women and children of one family. Behind me were three women with children, and further back two seats were occupied with a large party of women and children, judging by their sociability, of two different families. There was little talk; all the light chatter and sociability that should naturally distinguish such a pleasure trip to the shore were absent. To us, who had only gone on such excursions with friends and for a social outing, there was sadness in the inertness and silence of these people.

The women were clad in calico, and their relative positions in the family scale were marked by some extra bit of finery. For instance one wore a bright new bonnet, while that of her sister wife’s was shabby; another wore a faded common shawl, while the younger wife had a pretty new zephyr wrap that contrasted strangely with her coarse dress. And they were all men and women of a coarser fiber than any Caucasian people I had met outside of Utah, and apparently lower in the scale of humanity. In the women is seen the coarseness of undeveloped intelligence, of eternal drudgery, bearing the impress of writhing hearts out of which rebellion and morality had been all but crushed. Their hands were rough and hard with labor. They are not unkind to each other, these women; there was a consideration for each other that was apparently natural and reciprocal, as of fellow suffers under the same immutable law. Over and over again I heard one woman say to another whose child had got mixed up with hers, “Do you want Ella with you?” And the answer being usually “yes,” the child was passed over to its own mother. In this way the children were kept separate while together. Never were more pitiful sights of union and disunion, never sadder examples of crushed and broken womanhood.

I have seen poor and hard working people out for a days’ pleasure in many countries; and no people perhaps enjoy their rare picnic or holiday as do the poorest and hardest worked people. But here, in Utah, was none of that boisterous and rude humor that naturally distinguishes their uncultivated ideas of pleasure. There were no heavy jokes, no clumsy chaffing, no laughter, no spontaneous conversation or pleasure in the society of one with the other; all was dead and lifeless, and overhung with the gloom of sorrow and hard work.

The whole life here is to me inconceivably sad. The families of women and children living and going about together with hearts and souls crushed and necessarily asunder; the homes with two front doors; the rows of from two to five or six, perhaps more houses together; the porches with one man and two women resting in them in the cool of the day, silent and distrait; the double house, with a woman sad and lonely on one porch, while her husband, with the other wife, is laughing and chatting on the other.

And yet, reflecting on these rows of houses, the building of each addition of which has wrung some woman’s heart, I thought after all what better are we than they? This is bad enough and sad enough, and the United States certainly ought to interfere in behalf of these women as it did in behalf of those other slaves of darker skin once held and tortured in this free country.

But is Utah the only place in this great country of ours where polygamy is practiced? Is this the only spot where men maintained marriage relations with several women at one time Is Salt Lake City the only one where women’s hearts are broken? It is bad enough here, God knows, but there is a redeeming feature. There are no drunken, reckless, cast-off women, sacrificed, crushed, wholly depraved and scorned and scoffed at and despised by the fortunate few who enjoy comfort and protection, and good names. Here all names are good, and if there be any immorality, as I think, and depravity, they are all situated alike on an equal basis, and none can flout her sister women for possessing less virtue than herself.

To me it is all sad and demoralizing. The life together of many wives of one man is necessarily so. It must be the death of delicacy and of the finer emotions and sentiments. It is degrading to the women and demoralizing to the men, as any condition of master and slave must always be, and in Utah the sex relation is reduced to that, obedience and resignation to suffering being the leading features of the religious teaching of the women.

To be sure, the situation of these women lacks that degrading monetary consideration which destroys the self-respect and reduces to the gutter our unfortunate women. In Utah every woman works hard to support herself and children and enhance her husband’s means. Their symbol of the beehive is a good one, only the drones are masculine, and it is the women who work busily making honey for his kingship. Yes, I’d like to have an end put to the iniquities of Utah. I would like to have an end put to similar iniquities all over the world. “They are against the law?” Are they? Yes, but how often is the law enforced? Oh, yes, it is against the law to marry more than one woman, but a man may mislead and desert and send to death and destruction a dozen unhappy girls with impunity. The law doesn’t care how many girls are ruined; all it is particular about is that a few words of legal or religious sanction shall not be said over more than one of them with the same man.

In Utah they only destroy happiness and moral perception, in our States they blight the character, and ruin the future lives as well. In Utah women have the consolation, if consolation it is, of believing that they are fulfilling the divine instruction, and while they suffer here they have hopes of a heaven hereafter. Our unfortunates not only suffer here and become outcasts, but they are doomed to eternal perdition after this life. It is a question after all which system results in the most suffering. Our social system preserves the fairest exterior, certainly, but ah, how many aching hearts are hidden beneath, and how much deeper is the degradation of our degraded. Had we not better, while we are pressing the Mormons of Utah to the wall, purge the Mormonism that exists in the States,” and which exists in the more distressing form because it is without the Mormons’ religion and without their principle? I think we had.

However, we were on our way to take a bath in the Great Salt Lake, that mysterious inland sea that apparently has neither source nor outlet. Our little train ran across some sandy flats for an hour before we reached the beach, where we found bathing houses and suits. The bath fully realized our anticipations. The water was a little chilly, but so heavy with salt that one floats on the top rather too easily; it is hard work to keep under enough to swim. This makes the bathing delightful to timid people. One has not that sensation of sinking, and confidence is easy to have in a sea that insists on your remaining on the top of it. One needs to be careful not to get any water in one’s eyes or mouth, for it hurts the eyes ad strangles in the throat.

An hour’s ride brought us back again to the hotel, where we found something to quiet the tremendous appetite the bath had awakened. In the morning we found it was a race day, and that therefore there was not a carriage to be had. We were consoled, however, when we found the Mormon Temple and Tabernacle, the Beehive and other interesting sights were within easy walking distance. Salt Lake City seems a pleasant one to live in. Even those Gentiles who are loudest in their denunciation of the Mormons speak in the highest terms of the attractiveness of their city as a place of residence. The streets are broad and bright, the climate pleasant.

The Mormon Tabernacle, a most curious oblong and squat building, is especially famous for its acoustic properties, these being so perfect a pin’s fall at one end can be heard distinctly at the other extreme of the great building that holds five thousand people. We tested this to our entire satisfaction. The speaker in the pulpit can be heard perfectly in any part of the house without raising the voice above a natural conversational tone. The Tabernacle contains an organ of which they are very proud, otherwise it is a very plain and simple building. There is an allegorical picture or two painted on the walls representing the finding of the revelation by Joseph Smith, and other incidents in the history of their religious belief.

The new temple, still in process of construction, looms tall and massive beside the Tabernacle. It is not to be a hall for preaching, being divided into many chambers, where special and sacred ceremonies may be solemnized. The Endowment House is near at hand, but is closed. Rather the pretties of the three buildings in Temple Square is the Assembly Hall, though it is not as large as the others. Its hall for preaching is cozier than the Tabernacle, and here, too, are an organ, the emblematic beehive and allegorical pictures.

From Temple Square we walk down the street, past the erstwhile residence of Brigham Young, to the great arch called the Tithing Gate, through which all produce passes and a tenth part is taken. On the top of the arch is the symbolic beehive. An eagle is standing on it and clutching it with its strong talons, which is just about what the American Eagle is up to now in sad reality. Opposite Bingham [sic] Young’s we see President Taylor’s residence, a fine new mansion with two front doors. The number of front doors in the houses are replete with sad suggestion to the visitor of families that live in anything but unison. And so we drove about the city, until it is time to pack up our traps and resume our journey.

Leaving Salt Lake City, we encounter the gentlemanly Pullman conductor of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, who kindly takes me in charge and sees us to our cars on the Central Pacific Railroad, where I am I for another long night and day. …