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FROM THE PLAINS. – A correspondent of the St. Louis Republican writes from Independence on the 4th. He had just got through with the mail from Salt Lake City. A few miles from the latter, on the 1st of November, they found snow from three to seven feet deep. At Fort Larimie [Laramie], on the 16th December, another violent storm occurred. Such was its violence, that a man in the employment of the suttler, in going from the store to his quarters. was driven before it. as was supposed, and perished. On their way, near Bean [Bear] river, the mail party met the third handcart train of Mormons going west. The fourth and fifth trains were met at the Three Crossings of the Sweet Water [Sweetwater], in a very different condition from those in advance. They were suffering beyond measure, for the want of provisions. and on account of the cold. They were very badly clothed, and in consequence of the hardships, many of them were dying; in one camp they buried fifteen in one day. The mode of burial, since they cannot dig the frozen ground, is to lay the bodies in heaps, and pile over them willows and heaps of stones. Gov. Brigham Young. learning something of their condition, dispatched some men and provisions to their relief; but these were met by the mail party returning to the city again, having been turned back by the violence of the storms they had encountered. What the poor creatures will do or what will become of them, it is hard to determine. The correspondent says the Mormons are becoming emboldened, and bid defiance to the laws and institutions of the United States.— NorthwesternGazette .