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Show CHAPTER V DAVID AND THE LION WE followed the t rain down Big Mountain, up again through a gorge over Little Mountain, and down another gorge. The road was well beaten and mostly downhill. The cattle seemed almost as impatient as the emigrants to reach t he Valley. Many of the mule outfits must have pulled into the city during the noon hour. The slower-gaited oxen came down the canyon two hours and more after the mule teams. The shouting of the people in the wagons before us as they turned a sharp bend roused Lucy and myself to keen expectation. We had loitered some distance in the rear to escape the dust of the lower canyon. But at a call from me, our oxen broke into a shambling trot that soon brought us around t he turn. Suddenly the Valley appeared before us, stepping clown to the stlvery J ordan in narrow treeless terraces that ran level along the sides and bases of the mountains to right and left of us as far as the eye could see. Beyond the river the plain gradually rose in the same pecttliar natural terraces to t he mountains, thirty miles west. But to the north-west it dropped away t o the shimmering blue mirror of the great lake. We gladly turned our eyes from this dreary view, to gaze at the city that was 'beginning to appear under the hill. It lay on the terrace rising above the east bank of t he Jordan,- a great square of leafless trees, dotted wit h houses and divided into a checkerboard of large blocks by broad streets. The city 48 THE MORMON LION 49 boundary and the blocks were for the most part surrounded with walls of unburned mud brick. This was the Zion of whose beauties and wonders we had been told so much . . For all Lucy's fervour, I could see that she was c!Isappomtecl. She. must have contrasted this big scattered village with the large cities of her own country. Unlike most parties of emigrants, our train had not arnved at a time when the orchards about the houses were fragrant with blossoms or laden with fruit, and the double rows of shade trees along each side of the wide streets embowered with their foliage the rills of clear pure water that purled down every gut ter. When at last we entered the city through a gateway in the massive twelve-foot adobe wall, we found the street s almost deserted other than for the outfits ahead of us. But as we drove towards the heart of the city, between the long adobe walls of t he big blocks, the dirt-roofed adobe hovels and log shanties among the leafless orchards and withered gardens on either hand gave place to larger though hardly less ugly dwellings and then t o white-plastered stores. The music of a large band and a tremendous shouting of hosannahs told that we were approaching a great assemblage. The teams ahead of us were goaded to a quicker gait, and our oxen followed at the same shambling trot. Soon we came around a corner into a public square and found our train encamped in the midst of an enormous crowd of welcommg Saints . . The arrival of the party evidently had been proclaimed an occasion for general worship and thanksgiving on the part of all the brethren. A number of persons, many of them richly-dressed, perceived that Lucy and I belonged to the train, and hastened to meet us, calling out cordial welcomes. Their salutations drew upon us the attention of a tall repulsive-looking man whose authoritative manner D |
