A REVIEW OF SIR RICHARD BURTON'S CITY OF THE SAINTS Republished by the University of Colorado Press: 1994 by D. B. Timmins, PhD Sir Richard Burton, the renowned British linguist/explorer visited Salt Lake City just twelve years after the arrival of the first Mormon Pioneers in July 1847. Burton came in July 1859. His first contact with Mormons in America occurred in Iowa, where he stayed for a few days in a Mormon cabin on the Iowa plains. Burton said it was the first clean home, best food, and most civilized company he'd had since leaving New York. Perhaps because of his admiration of the Arab world, Burton seems to have had a favorable attitude towards the polygamous Mormon culture of his day. After leaving his Mormon friends in Iowa, he seems quite deliberately to deride the filth and ignorance of the other Americans he met on his trek west. Arriving in Salt Lake City, his first task was to call on Brigham Young and other Church leaders in the Lion House. He describes them as intelligent, well-spoken men, quite unlike the fanatic mountebanks he'd been led to expect. And he was impressed by the Mormon people he saw on the streets, and talked to. He also found them quite unlike the superstitiously ignorant folk he'd expected. He attended a meeting in the Tabernacle where he described the speakers as having given intelligent, well-prepared and well-delivered talks, totally unlike anything he'd been prepared for (though he comments somewhat unfavorably on the American dialect and some of the faulty grammar used by a couple of speakers). He was especially impressed by the Mormon method of sustaining church officials by common consent, saying it was totally unlike any procedure he'd ever observed in any other religion. A few days after arrival he attended a social function in the Social Hall (the foundations of which have recently been excavated on the avenue facing the ZCMI Center on State Street between South Temple and First South). He reported this to be the most sophisticated social event he'd observed since he'd last attended the Lord Mayor's Ball in London. He added that the band played better than any he'd heard in New York, and that the dress of those attending the ball was up to European capital city standards. He printed a copy of the evening's menu in the book, showing that the types of food offered were equally sophisticated. After a couple of weeks in Salt Lake, Burton, who held the rank of Colonel in the British Army and had letters of introduction, considered that he should not longer delay presenting his compliments to Colonel Johnston the U.S. officer in charge of Camp Lewis, founded after Johnston's march of semi-humiliation through the streets of Salt Lake after having been compelled to negotiate a truce after a disastrous winter on the plains east of Fort Bridger where he had been held for almost a year by the Mormon irregulars in the hills. Burton noted that Brigham had clearly outmaneuvered and out-negotiated the American Commander in Chief in Washington, as if he were himself "one of the leading Powers of Europe". Indeed, Burton predicted that the Mormons were destined to become a Third Nation between the United States and California. (Of course the Civil War assured that this was not to be the case.) He noted that the Camp Lewis site was chosen because it was far enough from both Salt Lake City and Provo that church leadership felt the troops would not bother the Mormon settlers, yet acceptable to the U.S. government because it assured military oversight and control to the route between the two main Mormon settlements of the time. Having observed the Mormon leadership at first hand, and having spoken in person with Brigham Young and heard him and his chief lieutenants preach in the Tabernacle, Colonel Burton was surprised to find the officers of Camp Lewis as prejudiced and ignorant of the facts as the American politicians he'd spoken to in New York before embarking on his trip. He decided that none of the officers had taken the trouble to visit Salt Lake City or to speak to the President of the Mormon Church, considering this, as an experienced military man, gross negligence on the part of any commanding officer. And he forthrightly said so in his book. After several months visiting Salt Lake City and the adjoining towns, Burton set off for California by way of Tooele, the Salt Flats, Reno (then still known as Mormon Station), and the passes of the Sierra Nevadas. He reported that as long as he was in Mormon Territory (to the summit of the California Sierras) he was warmly welcomed and well treated by Mormon settlers. But as Mormondom petered out in the California mountains, he again began encountering the typical uneducated, ignorant, slovenly, and ill-spoken Americans he held in such contempt. Burton's interesting and well-written book was widely distributed at the time of its publication. It had nothing but praise for Mormon leadership and society, and accomplishments in taming the desert -- and for the Mormon way of life. It is astonishing that it seems to have had so little effect on the thinking of American Congressmen and other policy makers, who continued in the thrall of anti-Mormon writers purveying a brand of nonsense regarding the Church, its leaders, and its doctrines. That educated military officers of the U.S. government living so close to LDS Church Headquarters could, as reported by Burton, hold contrary-to-fact beliefs, invented by enemies of the Church primarily to keep Utah out of the Union -- which they succeeded in doing for another thirty-three years following Burton's visit, simply shows predominance of prejudice over man's willingness to exert a little effort to ascertain the truth -- even when the truth is close at hand.