MORMONS IN CALIFORNIA.
This strange and turbulent people are growing and spreading with alarming rapidity in California. They are building up not a city like Jerusalem but an Empire on the shores of the Pacific. These strange people we are told are establishing the nucleus of a city in the midst of California.
By the Los Angeles Star, we learn that the price paid by them for the rancho was one hundred and two thousand dollars; $25,000 of this were paid down, the remaining seventy-seven is to be paid in two equal annual installments. San Bernardino contains within its boundaries more than eighty thousand acres of excellent land, a great part of which can be irrigated. The Santa Anna river runs through it, furnishing a large and unfailing supply of pure water, and mill seats. The mountains near are covered with pines, sufficient to supply with lumber all southern California for years. The improvements to be immediately made will be of great benefit to that country.
This settlement commands the Cajon Pass, and will protect the valley from further Indian incursions- We understand that a flouring mill and several saw mills will be erected there during the rainy season, and it is said that the Mormons now located near the Cajon Pass will raise enough wheat next year to supply the whole southern portion of California with flour.
It is said that a book is nearly out against the Mormons, and the largest ever printed in California. It appears at Coloma. The Alta Californian denounces this work as calculated to excite a great deal of prejudice, and lead to mischief. It says:
"However detestable and intolerable may be the religious sentiments of the Mormons, when inculcated in our midst, let us not permit a set of designing scoundrels to provoke disturbance and collision between us, or our interests, and these people, while they are so situated as to work us no harm, as friendly neighbors, but capable of inflicting upon us serious injury as enemies."
"The history of the rise and progress of the Mormons is without a parallel in the records of modern time. Like that sad relic of the ancient world, the Jewish race, we might almost say of the Mormons, "Empires have sunk, and the kingdoms passed away, Yet still apart, sublime in misery, stand
The wreck of Israel."
By way of St. Louis and Independence we also learn something of the movements of the Mormons. It is said that the Salt Lake Country is in a state of Revolution, that the U. S. officers, Judges, Indian Agents, &c., have been compelled to leave the Territory, and are now on their way to the States. The Secretary of the Territory managed to escape with $24,000 public moneys appropriated at the last session of Congress for the benefit of the Territory of Utah. He was pursued, overtaken and searched by the Mormons, but they did not secure the money. All the merchants, and other Mormons, have quit the country.
Brigham Young, the Governor, at a meeting of nearly 3,000 Mormons, stated that the United States Government stunk in his nostrils—that he was not Governor by permission of the United States Government, but by a commission from God. That he acknowledged no allegiance to the U.S. Government, and that he would resist any at tempt to exercise power over him till the death. That all who were not Mormons were Infidels and Gentiles, and unworthy of their protection or countenance-
It is also said that Young stated that he had risen from heaven—that Gen. Taylor was dead and in hell! That the United States Government was going to hell, and he didn't care how soon.
It is also said that Major Wingfield, from Santa Fe, has written to the Governor of New Mexico apprising him that about two hundred and ten Mormons were passed by him on the plains. They stated that they intended settling on the Gila or Colorado.
