Twelve Mormon Homes : Twelve Mormon homes visited in succession on a journey through Utah to Arizona.

Twelve Mormon Homes, page 097

No garden, no trees, nothing but rock and sand to look at till our eyes rested on the mountains in the distance. The house stood on a slight elevation above the plain, and was inhabited by an aged pair who were wearing out the evening of their days in comfortless desolation. They had a fire burning on the wide hearth in the mud-and-log-walled cabin, and we went in to warm ourselves. The poor old wife's palsied head nodded so that we could not understand her; but a chance remark of T.`s re- garding the brilliantly-colored woodcut of Beauregard and his Confederate generals that adorned the room, led the old man to overcome his repugnance to a Northern officer sufficiently to lead him to ask eager questions about Lee and Stonewall Jack- son. Every answer that pleased him, he greeted like a primitive Methodist with a long-drawn "Ah 1" or "Glory be to God!" I listened to the wind which howled round the cabin as if it were a ship in a gale, while my husband good-humoredly grati- fied the old man's curiosity. When we left the house the sun had dispersed the clouds, and the icy wind came from mountains bright with fresh-fallen snow. The sunshine was so brilliant, too, that the glare was un- bearable, and the absence of coloring, except staring white and blue, increased the feeling I had of being at sea with a brisk north-wester blowing. Hurrying into our carriages, we buried ourselves in the furs and prepared for an uninteresting afternoon. But we were not done with violent effects of color. There is no home-like scenery in Utah; a scene-painter's nightmare would be tame to nature's productions here with rocks and sand. The afternoon was wear- ing on to the sunset when we came to a blood-red land,-cliffs, 97