Every year some modification of the system is effected, which tends to increase still further the confusion in the relations of the sexes.  The latest is the doctrine, (which, like polygamy in its earlier stages, is believed, but not avowed,) that absence is temporary death, so far as concerns the transference of wives.  This is intended to apply to the two or three hundred missionaries who are dispatched yearly to all parts of the globe, from Stockholm to Macao.  It is astonishing that these missionary efforts, which have been pursued with unremitting zeal for the last twenty years, should not have ingrafted upon Mormonism some degree of that refinement which is supposed to result from travel.  On the contrary, they seem to have elaborated the natural brutality of the Anglo-Saxon character; and especially with regard to polygamy, their effect has been to acquaint the people of Utah with the grossest features of its practice in foreign lands, and encourage them to imitation.  Every Mormon, prominent in the Church, however illiterate in other respects, is thoroughly acquainted with the extent and characteristics of polygamy in Asiatic countries, and prepared to defend his own domestic habits, in argument, by historical and geographical references.  Not one of their missionaries has ever been admitted to intercourse with the higher classes of European society.  Their sphere of labor and acquaintance has been entirely among those whom they would term the lowly, but who might also be called the credulous and vulgar.  The abuse of a knowledge of the machinery of the Masonic order—­from which they have been formally excluded—­is one of the least evil of their practices, not only abroad, but at home.  Of the Endowment, one apostate Mormon has declared that “its signs, tokens, marks, and ideas are plagiarized from Masonry”; and it was a notorious fact, that every one of the Mormon prisoners at the camp at Fort Bridger was accustomed to endeavor to influence the sentinels at the guard-tents by means of the Masonic signs.

This cursory review of the domestic condition of the Mormons would not be complete without some allusion to the Indians who infest the whole country.  In the North, having their principal village at the foot of the Wind River Mountains, in the southeastern corner of Oregon, is the tribe of Mountain Snakes or Shoshonees, and the kindred tribe of Bannocks.  Throughout all the valleys south of Salt Lake City are the numerous bands of the great tribe of Utahs.  Still farther south are the Pyides.  The Snakes are superior in condition to any of the others; for, during a portion of the year, they have access to the buffalo, which have not crossed the Wahsatch Range into the Great Basin, within the recollection of the oldest trapper.  The only wild animals common in the country of the Utahs are the hare, or “jackass-rabbit,” the wild-cat, the wolf, and the grizzly bear.  There are few antelope or elk.  Trout abound in the mountain-brooks and in Lake Utah.  In the