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Chapter XXX.
The Waymarks of the Saints Along Their Route of Travel-Fairview Cemetery-the Grave of Solomon Hancock-Relics of Winter Quarters.
IT is worthy of record that the main body of the Latter-day Saints, in all their forced and voluntary movements, in their journeyings from Seneca county, New York, to the Great Salt Lake, have remained in a geographical belt of about 300 miles in breadth, and quite uniformly between 37 and 44 degrees north latitude, and within the climatic belt which is generally supposed to be adapted to developing the best capabilities of the race.
Some notice of waymarks they have left along this route the writer believes will be a fitting conclusion of this sketch. The Temple in Kirtland, the first edifice dedicated in these latter times to the performances of the ordinances of the Holy Priesthood, is still standing. Around it are numerous marks of the labors of the Saints, and in an adjoining grave-yard lie many of their remains. The land along the ordinary early routes of travel is also consecrated by their sleeping dust.
The writer visited Independence in December, 1875. He was shown the dilapidated remains of cabins occupied by the Saints when they were driven from Jackson county. He was informed there was considerable real estate in the county to which the present claimants had no legal title, it being still vested in Mormons who had purchased the lands from the general government, and been afterwards driven from their possessions.
The spot where the corner-stone of the Temple was said to have been laid was still unmolested, except being used as a play-ground by the youth of the surrounding families.
The writer did not visit other portions of Missouri which had been occupied by the Saints, but, doubtless, there are many marks of such occupancy, and many places where their dead were deposited now known only to the angels. We have already quoted Colonel Thomas L. Kane's unparalleled description of desolated Nauvoo. The Liverpool Route, speaking of the visit of its artist, Mr. Frederick Piercy, in 1853, says of Nauvoo and the Temple: "After the surrender of Nauvoo by the Saints, it gradually dwindled away in importance until it became what our artist found it. On the 10th of November, 1848, the Temple was fired by an incendiary, and on the 27th of May, 1850, a tornado blew down the north wall, and so shook the building that the Icarians, who had been engaged in re-building the edifice for their use, deemed it advisable to pull down the east and south walls, leaving only the west wall. This beautiful ruin is all that is left of what was once a work the most elegant in its construction, and the most renowned in its celebrity, of any in the whole west, and which had been built by the Latter-day Saints in the midst of poverty and persecution."
When the Mormons arrived at Council Bluffs, on the Missouri river, the country was Indian Territory. They were the "van of empire" rolling westward in that direction. The remains of their pioneering labors are fast disappearing, as well as the knowledge of them among the people who have been their successors. The writer was on a mission in that section of the country in 1876. Some of his observations will be of interest in this connection.