fore, to grow up, intermarry without any mixture from other incoming people, and practice polygamy as they now practice it, the male race in a few generations would become extinct. I have observed, very frequently, that the more wives a man has, the greater the proportion of female to male children he has. This might have been predicted not only from facts observable in all polygamic countries, but also from well-known physiological laws. If the Mormons were to adopt the old Arab custom of burying female children alive, when they had more than one or two, hundreds of babes would be murdered in Utah. Not only is there this disproportion, but there is a fearful mortality among the Mormon children. I think I can say, more children die in Salt Lake City, notwithstanding the salubrity of its climate, than in any other city of its size in the Union. According to their own census, the mortality of Utah is next to that of Louisiana, and the large proportion is children. Salt Lake City is therefore nearly as unhealthy as New Orleans.
This mortality, too, is particularly noticed in the families of polygamists. Brigham Young, considering the number of his wives, has but a very small family, something over thirty children. Quite a number of his wives are sterile; many others have had large families, but who have all died in infancy. His houses are filled with his women, but their children are in their graves. Joseph Smith had many wives; no one but himself knows the number, and many of them had children, but with one or two exceptions they are all dead; and well for them, poor little ones. Many of the Mormon leading men have many wives, but their children are not
