The Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas by Frederick Marryat

Nauvoo, the holy city of the Mormons, and present capital of their empire, is situated in the north-western part of Illinois, on the east bank of the Mississippi, in lat. 40 deg. 35' N.; it is bounded on the north, south, and west by the river, which there forms a large curve, and is nearly two miles wide. Eastward of the city is a beautiful undulating prairie; it is distant ten miles from Fort Madison, in Iowa, and more than two hundred from St. Louis.

Before the Mormons gathered there, the place was named _Commerce_, as I have already said, and was but a small and obscure village of some twenty houses; so rapidly, however, have they accumulated, that there are now, within four years of their first settlement, upwards of fifteen thousand inhabitants in the city, and as many more in its immediate vicinity.