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Show CHAPTEE VI. POLYGAMIA. TURN back the wheels of time, imaginative reader, from 1874 to the autumn of 1868, and allow the author to resume his personal narrative. The first storm of the season had just tipped the summits of the Wasatch with light snow, while summer still smiled upon the valleys, when our train wound slowly through Parley's Cafion, and emerged upon the eastern " bench," from which I obtained my first view of the Mormon Capital. The city stands at the north- east corner of a valley shaped like a horse- shoe the Wasatch the eastern boundary, the Oquirrah the western, and the lake lying to the north- west across the open end. A small spur puts out westwardly from the Wasatch, and breaks down in successive " benches" to the upper part of the city ; out of it flow City Creek and several smaller streams, and along its base bubble up hot chem-ical springs and fountains of pure brine. The topography is Palestine re-produced. We have Lake Utah, a fresh water mountain tarn, dis-charging through the Jordan into another Dead Sea the Great Salt Lake. Along the Jordan extends a fertile but narrow valley, its widest section near the city; all around are mountains, and beyond those mountains long desert wastes, with only here and there a fertile spot. North of Salt Lake City numerous coves indent the mountains ; in each is a small fertile tract and a Mormon settlement, while south-ward, for four hundred miles, is a series of narrow, fan- shaped valleys settled in like manner. I found the city a nice place to rest in, especially in September; and after a journey of eight hundred miles over barren plains, like all vis- ( 90) BRIGHAM YOUNG. |