Sir Richard Button's City of the Saints, a travel narrative chronicling the famed explorer's trip across North America and three-week residence among the Mormons in Salt Lake City, views the nineteenth-century Mormon settlement through the "oriental" perspective he developed in his previous travels through the Middle East, most notably his "pilgrimage" to Mecca and Al-Medinah. Seeing Salt Lake City as "the last new name to the list of 'Holy Cities'," Burton not only compares the Mormon city to his experiences in the Orient, but he fully engages a scholarly approach that characterizes the European discursive practice defined by Edward Said as "Orientalism." Drawing on his immense knowledge and experience in the study of "other" cultures, Burton presents Mormonism as a coherent system of codes and behaviors, and defends the "inner logic" of Mormon practices, especially polygamy. As the general attitude among the English middle class toward the Mormon settlement was unfavorable, if not hostile, mostly on the grounds of polygamy, Burton's views were generally castigated on moral grounds. Yet his "oriental" knowledge gives him license to speak the forbidden, and he maintains his unique position on the Mormon Question through a formidable presentations not only of Mormon culture, but of the mechanisms of "other" cultures as well. **********
