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Show 54 WESTERN WILDS. piece of ground, where, for a few Hundred yards, the wind had remove^ the loose heaps, and left bare the flinty and gravelly subsoil. Thus, by most exhausting labor, we accomplished ten or twelve miles a day. Half an hour or more of temperate coolness then gave us respite till soon after sundown, when the cold wind came down, as if in heavy vol-umes, from the snowy range, ami tropic heat was succeeded by arctic cold with amazing suddenness. On the 27th of August my mules were exhausted with heat; that night ice formed in our buckets as thick as a pane of glass. Thence across Green River we found Bridger Plains and the valley of Bear River delightful by comparison, and at noon of September 4th passed the summit of the Wasatch and entered Echo Canon. Two days we traveled down this great ravine, enjoying a succession of ro-mantic views sometimes down in the very bed of the stream, and sometimes far up the rocky sides of the cliff, where the " dug- way" wound in and out along the projecting " benches." Emerging thence into Weber Valley, we came upon the first gardens and cultivated fields I had seen for a thousand miles. The Mormon dwellings would have appeared poor and mean in-deed in the States, but to one just from the barren plains the valley was pretty enough. The railroad now runs down Weber Cafion, but we followed the old stage and wagon road southward up the Weber and over the divide into Parley's Park. Thence down the wild gorge known as Parleys Cafion, where every turn brings to view a fresh delight in the sublime and beautiful ; and out upon the " bench," on the evening of September 9th, we saw the great valley of Jordan, and the Salt Lake spreading far to the north and west. Twenty miles westward the Oquirrh Range glowed in the clear air, a shining mass of blue and white. Great Salt Lake ex-tended beyond our sight to the northward, its surface glisten-ing in the light of the declining sun, while to our right the " City of the Saints " as yet appeared but a white spot on the land-scape. To our left the caflon of the Jordan seemed to close, giving the impression that that stream poured from the hills, while down the cen-ter of the valley the river shone like a glimmering band of silver. A PULPIT ROCK: ECHO CASON. |
