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Show AND THE CITY. 89 that of scalding; but in a minute the temperature was en durable and even pleasant. Remaining immersed too long, however, I paid the penalty in the enervation that followed. The water is soft and delightful for a bath, is strongly im pregnated with sulphur, which gives it a light blue color, and I should judge the temperature to be above one hundred degrees. Salt Lake City is on the lowest bench of land between the Jordan and the mountains on the east. The site is well selected, with a view to drainage and irrigation, and alto gether it has a very desirable location. It could be enlarged almost indefinitely with the same advantages as a city it now possesses. Washington must surrender to Salt Lake City the ex pressive name given to it by John Randolph, and no longer be called the " City of Magnificent Distances." Salt Lake City is regularly laid out, with the streets at right angles. The squares are of uniform size, containing, as originally planned, eight lots of one and a quarter acres, each. Many of these have been divided and subdivided, and on the business streets cut up into building lots. In the early part of its existence there was built along the north and south boundaries of the city, a tall wall of earth, nominally for defence against the Indians, but really to afford labor to the suffering and disaffected Saints. The chosen people of God, as they claim to be, in these latter days were not exempt from the infirmities that character ized God's chosen people of old. As they murmured against Moses, when suffering in a desolate country, so the Latter Day Saints murmured against Brigham for bringing them out to die in the wilderness, as they thought. There was trouble then in Zion, that threatened serious consequences to the new church, but Brigham Young was equal to the emergency. He would not allow them to live in idleness, and think over their misfortunes, so he encour aged all kinds of amusements, and employed large numbers to build this wall, which was really of no utility i and when the necessity for finding employment in this way for the 5* |
