AMERICAN NOTES.

Westport Times, Volume IV, Issue 697, 13 August 1870, Page 3

AMERICAN NOTES.

Gen. Parker, Commissioner of Indian Affairs estimated the Indian warriors in the neighborhood of Fort Sully at about 8,000. They are well armed and mounted. About 6,000 of these are Sioux, and the remainder is made up of scattering tribes. He is satisfied they are bent on war, and if it shall take place ib will be the most destructive and expensive Indian war we have ever had. lie says these savages are better prepared with horses than our own cavalry, and the Indians can raise about twelve thousand warriors. The Mormon ladies of Ogden held a meeting.in the tabernacle oi thatcity to denounce Mr Cullom and his Bill, and to protest against all and every interference with the holy institution of polygamy. According to the Ogden Junction, they gave expression to their views with a power of oratory which, if they felt inclined, might tempt some of them to take the stump and increase the number of women lecturers. Mrs Charilla Browning thought that as Mr Cullom was " a Kentucky corn-cracker, he had cracked corn till he had become cracked himself," or he would have nothing to do with such a Bill. Miss G-. C. Bingham, who, we are told, is only fourteen years of age, said she was sorry Congress was engaged in framing measures for the destruction of the Latter Day Saints. She could not look on with silent indifference. The mission of the Saints is to reform abuses which have corrupted the world for ages, and establish peace and righteousness. Mrs Martha H. Brown said: —" In my childhood I was robbed of a dear father and brother, who fell martyrs to the truth in the tragedies of Nauvoo. My aged mother is now helpless, and suffering through the exposures and relentless persecutions to which we have been subjected; and now I would rather die than bring myself down to the level of those who talk of freeing the women of Utah." Six resolutions were afterwards unanimously adopted. The first earnestly protested on the part of the ladies of Utah, against the passage of the Cullom Bill. The second expressed indignation at the unjust and unlawful designs of corrupt demagogues, eager to found their own greatness on the ruin of thousands of their fellow-citizens. The third denounced the Cullom Bill as a deadly instrument aimed at the very root of the tree of liberty. The fourth ap pealed to every honest mind and heart to use their influence to stay such measures ere it be too late The fifth pledged the women of Utah, should the bill pass, to prefer a prison house with their fathers, husbands, and sons, to the gilded homes of misery and vice which the world would fain offer them. The sixth declared that they accepted polygamy, with all its trials, as a blessing bestowed upon them for their present and eternal salvation, and the salvation of future generations ; and then went on to express their pride in it when compared with the state of society in the world, and their wish to uphold it by deed as well as word, and their determination to teach their children to cherish and obey its righteous principles. Public attention in America is now drawn to the Darien Canal surveying expedition, which the country hopes will result in securing an inter-oceanic transit that will maintain a successful rivalry to the Suez Canal. The expedition arrived at A spin wall in February, and on the 21st of that month, preparations having been completed, the naval surveying party began operations. The design was to survey the most desirable route from the Atlantic coast to the head waters of a stream that was known to flow into the Pacific. The surveyors, with 40 natives, began operations at Caledonia Bay, a point 180 miles east of Aspinwall, and cut a road through the woods from the coast to the head waters, or what were supposed to be the head waters, of the stream. They returned to the coast, and on March 14, when the last mail left Caledonia Bay, were preparing to cut another road in a different direction to the same stream. The natives showed no hostility, were frightened at first, but afterwards assisted the explorers in every way. Some of the surveyors were at first poisoned in the face by the mansanello sap, but all had recovered. The party are said to be sanguine of discovering an easy canal route across the isthmus, and are preparing a topographical map of the country back to the base of the mountains. The surface is heavily timbered, and abounds in snakes, but no wild animals were seen