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Show CHAPTER XXIII. SWINGING ' ROUND THE CIRCLE. ZION was hot in a double sense when I reached it in July, 1872. The season was unusually warm ; the Saints and Gentiles were con-ducting a bitter politico- religious campaign, and the nation was dis-tracted by the spectacle of Horace Greeley running for President on the Democratic ticket. The Mormons all swore by Greeley, and prophecies of his election were abundant. He had visited them in his overland journey of 1858, and out of his letters they had man-aged to pick many comforting passages ; while the " squatter sov-ereignty " doctrine of Stephen A. Douglas had suited their position so admirably, that they inevitably became zealous Democrats. The con-test was not pleasant to a traveler, and, after a ten days' visit, I jour-neyed on to Soda Springs, then ambitiously styled " The future Sara-toga of the West." Leaving Corinne, Sunday, August 4th, on a narrow- guage mule, I spent the first night with a Mormon rancher in Cache Valley. This beautiful region was long the winter rendezvous of the North- west Fur Company, and many are the legends of grand councils here with Shoshone, Bannock and Uintah; of love- making between swarthy trappers and dusky maidens; of grand revels, often ending in a free fight, in which ordinary hostile divisions were ignored, and every man went in for personal revenge. Now it is the abode of 15,000 Mor-mons, and the granary of Utah. The valley, or rather basin, is in-closed on all sides by lofty mountains, their summits tipped with snow in mid- summer. Through it Bear River runs in many a winding maze for seventy miles, and from all sides bright crystal affluents join the main stream, each singing of the snowy heights whence it came. The traveler along one side of the valley sees all the Mormon villages on the other side, each set back in a little cove, but those near him are hidden by the projecting mountain spurs. From the upper part of Cache (" concealed ") Valley, the road rises to a rocky plateau. There the Bear River makes a big bend to the north, and the mountains, which have followed close on its eastern bank for a hundred miles, give back, and we find here a broad, green ( 371) * |