There was a rattle of musketry. They sprang
forward against the door— a bullet went
through it. They sprang backwards. Open
flew the door, and an armed mob with
blackened faces came in. A flash and a
roar, and down went Hiram Smith, shot.
Joe's revolver snapped three times, missing
fire. He made a bound to the window.
Two balls struck him from the door— one
struck him from the window. There was one
wild cry from his heart, "O Lord, my God!"
—and down he fell out of the window on the
ground. They propped him against a wall
there, and shot at him again, as his bleeding
body drooped forward from it. Four
bullets were found in his body — and will,
peradventure, be carried to the credit side of
his life-account.

After his death, the Mormons had a time of
sad tribulation; a time of troubles from within
and without. It is easy to see that sectarian
ferocity was at the bottom of the persecution
they met with. Governor Ford issued a
proclamation denying for himself any belief in
their having committed certain crimes
attributed to them; and sometime before, the
celebrated Henry Clay had expressed his
"lively interest" in their progress, and his
"sympathy with their sufferings." But the
neighbours could not be pacified; the
Mormons had to go away west, once more; and
the town they had built was reduced to ashes.
They crossed the Mississippi, and set out for
the " Great Salt Lake Valley,"—away beyond
the Rocky Mountains.

Their passage is one of the most marvellous
things on record. Colonel Kane of the
United States, who travelled with them, has
left an extremely interesting account of it.
We hear of wagons crossing the Mississippi
on the ice; of weary journeys across
wild prairies; long chill nights of dead cold;
sickness and death; graves dotting all the
line of march; seed sown here and there, with
thoughtful benevolence, that after voyagers
might find a crop growing for them. Then
there were halts when "tabernacle camps"
were pitched, and hymns were chanted.
The prairies heard—

"By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept,"

sung there. Their depth of faith through
that dreary journey was wonderful; it seems
to have warmed them like actual fire.

They established themselves in the State of
Deseret, and some of their body were the
first who discovered the gold of California.
But it seems that the colony did not send
many there; they esteem it their proper office
to "raise grain, and to build cities." They
claim, too, the distinction of living in better
and higher relation to the Indian tribes than
any settlers have yet done.

We have scattered up and down such
remarks as we thought would illustrate Joe
Smith's career. Let us say a word of the
Mormon organisation.

The Mormons are governed by elders,
priests, teachers, exhorters, and deacons. An
apostle is an elder, and baptises and ordains.
The priest teaches, expounds, and administers
sacraments. The teacher watches over the
church, and sees that there is no iniquity;
he exercises, in fact, a kind of censorship.
The elders meet in conference every three
months; and the presiding elder or president
is ordained by the direction of a high council
or general conference.

By the latest accounts, the Great Salt Lake
City prospers very well. It is the capital ot
the state of "Deseret," with boundaries of
immense extent. They stretch from thirty-
three degrees of northern latitude, to a point
where they intersect the one hundred and
eighth degree of western longitude. Thence
they run to the south-west, to rejoin the
northern frontier of Mexico, and follow
to the west, even to its mouth, the bed
of the River Gila, which separates the
state of Deseret from the Mexican
frontiers. The line of separation further runs
along the frontier of Low California to
the Pacific Ocean. It remounts the side
towards the north-west, as far as one
hundred and eight degrees thirty minutes of west
longitude, while it trends towards the north
to the point where this line meets the
principal crest of Sierra Nevada. These
boundaries stretch still northward along this chain
till it meets with that which separates the
waters of Columbia, and those waters which
are lost in the great basin. They then double
towards the east, to follow this last chain,
which separates the waters of the Gulf of
Mexico from those of the Gulf of
California, at the point of departure. Such are the
boundaries as described on a map published
by order of the Senate of the United States.

Accessions to the Mormon community are
being fast made from this country; a fact
we learn from a well drawn-up volume of
the "National Illustrated Library," entitled,
"The Mormons, or Latter-Day Saints: a
Contemporary History." Another authority
avers that from Liverpool alone, fifteen
thousand emigrants have turned their faces
to the new Mormon Mecca in Deseret,
with the view of making it their future
home. "Under the name of Latter-Day
Saints," says one of Mr. Johnston's "Notes
of North America," "the delusions of the
system are hidden from the masses by the
emissaries who have been despatched into
various countries to recruit their numbers
among the ignorant and devoutly-inclined
lovers of novelty. Who can tell what two
centuries may do in the way of giving an
historical position to this rising heresy?"

Nauvoo was a neglected ruin, when M.
Cabet, the spirited speculator in "Icarie,"
thought the site more salubrious than Texas,
and resolved to establish his French colony
there. His party arrived at the spot in 1849.
We see from a letter of M. Cabet's, that the