Page 244 - AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS

Around the World in 80 Days

years afterwards, more honourable and honoured than
ever, at Independence, Missouri, the chief of a flourishing
colony of three thousand disciples, and his pursuit thence
by outraged Gentiles, and retirement into the Far West.

Ten hearers only were now left, among them honest
Passepartout, who was listening with all his ears. Thus he
learned that, after long persecutions, Smith reappeared in
Illinois, and in 1839 founded a community at Nauvoo, on
the Mississippi, numbering twenty-five thousand souls, of
which he became mayor, chief justice, and general-in-
chief; that he announced himself, in 1843, as a candidate
for the Presidency of the United States; and that finally,
being drawn into ambuscade at Carthage, he was thrown
into prison, and assassinated by a band of men disguised in
masks.
Passepartout was now the only person left in the car,
and the Elder, looking him full in the face, reminded him
that, two years after the assassination of Joseph Smith, the
inspired prophet, Brigham Young, his successor, left
Nauvoo for the banks of the Great Salt Lake, where, in
the midst of that fertile region, directly on the route of the
emigrants who crossed Utah on their way to California,
the new colony, thanks to the polygamy practised by the
Mormons, had flourished beyond expectations.

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