(Previous installment)

(David has arrived at St. Louis, where he must work for a season. Much of this installment is an impersonal description of the mighty city of St. Louis – read the first couple of paragraphs, then skip ahead to the last screen where David again picks up his adventures.)

In my last chapter I closed with my arrival in St. Louis. Now I wish to give a few historical items of this great city, said to contain 500,000 inhabitants, and some of my experience while there.

Since my first arrival in St. Louis I have had five missions to the United States, making that city my headquarters every time, so I write of it understandingly. Thousands of the Saints have located there temporarily or passed through it on their way to Utah. Hundreds of old-time “Mormons” are there yet by the wayside without oil in their lamps, and without hope in the world. Their children are growing up to manhood and womanhood in the midst of sin and shame without salvation. The judgments of God may wake them up to a sense of their duty, if they are not dead to righteousness. There are a few faithful Latter-day Saints still in St. Louis waiting and praying for the way to open for their deliverance from Babylon. They are endeared to me by the gospel tie, and by their goodness of heart. If they continue faithful the Lord will open their way and establish them in Zion.

We will leave them for the present and tell you that in the Spring of 1764, a party of French fur traders established a trading post on the west bank of the Mississippi, twenty miles below the mouth of the Missouri River, and named it St. Louis, in honor of Louis XV, the reigning monarch of France and the Louisianas.

After various negotiations, on the 13th of April 1803, the United States bought from the Emperor Napoleon the whole of the Louisianas, and paid for the same the sum of $15,000,000.

St. Louis was incorporated as a town in 1809, and in 1817 the first steamboat appeared on the Mississippi.

In the month of June, 1844, about the time the Prophet Joseph and his brother Hyrum were murdered in cold blood, the Mississippi rose seven feet and seven inches above the highest water mark known at St. Louis, and swept through the States of Missouri and Illinois with an avenging fury, as if to wash out the blood of the prophets, and despoil the spoilers of the Saints. Fifteen hundred persons were driven from their homes, and many perished in the flood.

As yet no railroads or telegraph lines connected this city with the east. The far west was in Missouri and all the country beyond to the Rocky Mountains, and from there to the Pacific Ocean was inhabited by Indians, and but little known or explored by white men. Utah was then denominated the great American desert. Now there is a railroad spanning the continent from ocean to ocean, and our own mountain home is connected with the great cities east and west by telegraph and railroad lines.

With the completion of the great St. Louis iron bridge over the Mississippi, twelve lines of railroad center at this point in a grand union depot. The bridge cost upwards of eight million dollars. It is 6,220 feet in length, including its approaches. The bridge, proper, is 2,048 feet, including the abutments, which measure 524 feet. The rest is divided into three grand spans, two of them 502 feet in length, and the center one 520 feet. The bridge is two stories high. The lower one is exclusively for the use of railroad trains; the upper story is for foot passengers, wagons and vehicles of every description, including the street railroad cars.

A view from the top of the bridge, owing to its great height, is quite impressive. When I witness the moving panorama of real life below and see the great masses of people in their daily avocations, I am led to ask the question: “Do the people know what they are living for?”

The St. Louis water works are the most complete in the country. The water used is from the Mississippi River, which is very muddy, and has to be pumped from the river at great expense into settling ponds by three very powerful engines, capable of pumping 25,000,000 gallons each per day. The water is pumped from the settling ponds by three engines of the same power as the first named, and forced through iron piping to the top of a tower one hundred and sixty feet in height, from which it runs to a grand storage reservoir five miles distant to Compton Hill, the highest point in the city. This last reservoir is eight hundred feet long, four hundred feet wide and twenty-three feet deep. It has a capacity of 60,000,000 gallons, which would be sufficient in case of accident at the waterworks to supply the city for three days, the average daily consumption of the half million inhabitants in St. Ouis being 22,000,000 gallons. From this reservoir the water is distributed all over the city through 188 miles of iron pipes, ranging from three feet to three inches in diameter. Should anything happen to cut off the water from the city in case of fire it would be a great calamity to the people of St. Louis.

The fire department and the police force of St. Louis are said to be the most efficient in the country. The city has eighteen steam fire engines; each engine is run by nine men and two span of horses. Every man is paid one thousand dollars a year. The men and horses are at their post, ready for action day and night. The police department number four hundred and seventy-five members and are paid the same as the firemen. They alone keep the peace by physical force. Were they to be removed for one week and the ministers called upon to keep the peace by moral suasion, as the priesthood rule in Zion, St. Louis would be a pandemonium, and there would be no protection for property or person.

The public parks and floral gardens are numerous and healthful for recreation. Some of them are gems of natural beauty, and the perfection of artificial landscapes. We should have more of such places in Zion. They tend to purify the mind and please the eye, refine the taste and lift our thoughts above the vulgar things of earth.

The public buildings, charitable institutions, schools, hospitals and seminaries are all praiseworthy; but there is a dark picture of sin and shame in St. Louis, which is contaminating and corroding to the very core every department of society. I will not unveil it to the pure minds of my young brethren and sisters in Zion. Suffice it to say the whole body politic is corrupt, and country is filled with violence; virtue is tainted with vice, purity is sullied with dishonor, and confidence is lost.

This, my young brethren and sisters, you can see, is the state of society our enemies would make in the home of the Saints if they had the power. But they will signally fail in their dastardly work, for the devil will only get his own. “My sheep,” says Jesus, “know my voice, and a stranger they will not follow.” They who have listened to the voice of God through President Young and the holy priesthood, have been led in paths of peace and prosperity all the day long, and it will continue so until the wicked have no power to trouble in Zion.

On my first arrival in St. Louis, in the spring of 1846, I got acquainted with several coal miners belonging to the Church, who lived at a place called Dry Hill, four miles west of the city. We leased forty acres of coal land, sunk a pit and did well as far as making money was concerned. I wanted to be a Saint, but not so with my partners, money was their motto; and to obtain it they sought the friendship of the world, partook of its spirit and stooped from their high calling as Saints to vain pursuits which led them, like many others to participate in the pernicious ways of the wicked. They lost their faith, left the Church, and are to-day on the downward road to perdition. I remonstrated with them, proving from the word of God that all worth living for was to be found in the kingdom of God; but they laughed me to scorn, scouted at my zeal and called me over religious, when I well knew that I fell far short of what a Saint should be. so I determined to live my religion and go to the west with the body of the Church. I sold out my interest in the coal mine, or rather gave it away and bought a lot of clothing which I packed in a chest. But I could not find any conveyance up the Missouri River by steamboat until late in the season, so I determined to go on foot, and left my box of clothes with friends in St. Louis to be sent after me the first opportunity.

I took a final leave, as I thought, of the place, for I was going away into the wilderness with the Saints, little thinking then that all the world would follow us, although the prophets had declared of old that the kingdom of God would be established in the top of the mountains, and all nations should flow unto it.

I started with the view of being separated from the world, and traveled a distance of over five hundred miles on foot and alone, through a newly settled country, with few houses and far between in many places. I found the saints at last all right in Winter Quarters, near where Omaha now stands, in Nebraska. Although I was weary and jaded in body I was joyous in spirit to think that I had at last got to the home of the Saints, where I could serve the Lord without being troubled with the wicked. But I have learned since that the gospel net gathers all kinds, and that all who claimed to be Saints were not worthy of the name.

The pioneers had left for the Rocky Mountains to seek out a home for the Saints a few days before my arrival. I felt sorry I had not the privilege of going with them.

I found Brother Robert L. Campbell, with whom I was acquainted in Scotland; he was living then at Dr. Richards’ place. He received me kindly and got me a home in Orson Pratt’s family, for which I have ever felt thankful.

(To be continued)