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Show POLYQAMIA. 97 ^ abin not large enough to make one comfortable. Such cases were my first select specimens of the practical operations of the " Celes-tial Law." As this was but one of many journeys I made in Utah, a few general notes on the topography will be in order. The Wasatch Mountains on the east, and Sierra Nevada on the west, like the two sides of a ( ), inclose a region known as the Great Basin, in which nature appears to have worked on a dif-ferent plan from that pursued in the rest of the country. All the streams run towards the center, none towards the sea; a river is larger at the head than at the mouth when it has a mouth very few of the lakes have any outlet, and, with rare exceptions, both pools and lakes are bitter with salt, iron, lime, or alkali. From the mountains which form the rim of the Great Basin, sub- ranges successively fall off towards the center, and the whole interior plain is an almost unbroken desert. But from the Wasatch and Sierras many streams put out towards the center, and, at the points where they leave the mountains, are bordered by little fan- shaped valleys. These, constitute all the cultivable land in the Basin ; the rest is fit only for timber or grazing, or is totally barren. Throughout the Basin all the detached mountains run north and south; on them is the only timber, and about their base the only grass to be found. If the mountain is high enough to supply melting snow throughout the summer, there may be a settlement at its base; otherwise all the streams that issue from it will be dry in early spring, and cultivation, that is to say, irrigation, be impossible. Southward, the country grows steadily dryer and more barren ; the valleys smaller, the deserts larger, the streams more unreliable. In Arizona and Southern Utah, I found it difficult, indeed, to get water twice in a day's ride. In the north the most rugged mount-ains are relieved by graceful adjuncts; there is a gradual ascent from plain to bench, from bench to foot- hill and lower sub- range, and over all is a faint green tinge from brush or bunch- grass, or a dreamy haze that softens the rudest outlines. But in the south there is a grandeur that is awfully suggestive suggestive of death and worn- out lands, of cosmic convulsions and volcanic catastro-phes that . swept away whole races of pre- Adamites. There the broad plateaus are cut abruptly by deep cartons with perpendicular sides, sometimes 2000 feet in height ; there is a less gradual ap-proach to the highest ranges, and the peaks stand out sharply de-fined against a hard blue sky. The air is noticeably dryer ; there is no haze to soften the view, and the severe outlines of the cliffs 7 |