A Host of Mormon Proselytes.
Without doubt one of the most inscrutible mys-teries of modern times is to be found in the doc-trine of Mormonism. No other religious dogma is to be found (saving only, perhaps, that of religious Abolitionism,) whose votaries pursue it with more blind and unreasoning zeal. No hardship is so great that they do not meet and overcome it with cheerfulness. No persecution seems to dampen their ardor or give the least check to their exer-tions. Led on by faith in a system which the uni-versal Christian world regards as worse than paganism ganism, their perseverance and zeal put to shame the professors of a more eniglitened religion, and constitute the greatest wonder of the age. Why is it?
No less than six hundred Mormon proselytes ar-rived in this city last Saturday night, enroute for the "Promised Land." They remained in the city during Sunday, which day was spent in one of the freight houses at the Central depot. The time was passed in the peculiar exercises of their religion, and other duties pertaining 10 the prosecution of their still long and laborious journey.
About two-thirds of them are English and the remainder Germans. They are under the leader ship of Brother Ross, an English Mormon about 35 or 40 years of age, who has visited this country before, and made the trip to Salt Lake. There seems to be a greater proportion of women than men, and a few of the women are quite attractive and intelligent in appearance. Most of them, how-ever, are ugly, repulsive, and ignorant creatures, the ages of the party varying from the nursing in-fant to the second childhood of infirm and totter-ing old age. The most extraordinary feature about them is their strong and unflinching faith in the religious delusion under which the Mormon doctrines have brought them. They seem to re-gard their journey as an imperative duty, and per-form it with the greatest cheerfulness and good will; mastering its difficulties and obstacles with a pa-tience and devotion worthy of the old crusaders.
A writer in the Albany Statesman, who visited the party during its halt in that city, says :
Among the party were two interesting and lady-like English girls. In conversation they informed us that they were from Manchester, where they had left their parents, and started on their weary pilgrimage to the land of promise. We informed them that their journey would be along and toil-some one, and that we feared that they would repent having left a comfortable home before they arrived at their destination. One of them cheer-fully replied—"Oh, no, sir, we have made our calculations, and counted the cost. We never should have entered upon our task had we not felt satisfied that we could finish it." They informed us there were upwards of eighty from their own neighborhood, and that the remainder of the Eng-lish were from London, Liverpool, and adjacent places.
The delusion of these infatuated beings must be strong and deap seated, indeed, when it leads the old and young of both sexes, and all conditions to encounter the trials and dangers incident to such an undertaking as they have entered upon. Some of them, even now, are sick and feeble, and these with the little children and aged, are destined to lay down their lives in a foreign land, for it is im-possible for them to endure the fatigues of such a journey as the overland trip to the Mormon regions.
These people, or those who speak for them, deny that they have any sympathy with the monstrous doctrine of a plurality of wives, as practiced in Utah, and assert that it is no part of the Mormon creed, as it has been taught to them. The same has been said by previous parties of Mormon prose-lytes before their arrival in Utah. In 1852, we visited a parly about equal in numbers to the present, which had encamped near Keokuk, Iowa, to make preparations for the overland journey. They all protested great horror of the doctrine of poligamy, and pretended to believe that its exist-ence in Utah was a fiction told by the enemies of Mormonism. There is every reason to believe that the proselyting preachers of Mormonism suppress this most disgusting feature of their system. Were it otherwise, their success would be measurably less.
This party of Mormons left the city Sunday night. They go to Florence, Nebraska, where they will make preparations to start in wagon and hand-cart trains for the kingdom of the Latter Day Saints.
