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Show CHAP. IV.. THE HOLY CITY. 217 miles an hour, is under a chief water-master or commissioner, assisted by a water-master in each ward, and by a deputy in each block, all sworn to see the fertilizing fluid fairly distributed. At the corners of every ward there is a water-gate which controls the supplies that branch off to the several blocks, and each lot of one and a quarter acres is allowed about three hours' irrigation during the week. For repairs and other expenses a property tax of one mill per dollar is raised, and the total of the impost in 1860 was $1163 25. The system works like clock-work. " The Act to Incorporate the Great Salt Lake City Water-works" was approved January 21,1853. Walking in a northward direction up Main, otherwise called Whisky Street, we could not but observe the " magnificent distances" of the settlement, which, containing 9000--12,000 souls, covers an area of three miles. This broadway is 132 feet wide, including the side-walks, which are each twenty, and, like the rest of the principal avenues, is planted with locust and other trees. There are twenty or twenty-one wards or cantons, numbered from the S.E. " boustrophedon" to the N.W. corner. They have a common fence and a bishop apiece. They are Sailed after the creeks, trees, people, or positions, as Mill-Creek Ward, Little Cotton-wood, Denmark, and South Ward. Every ward contains about nine blocks, each of which is forty rods square. The area of ten acres is divided into four to eight lots, of two and a half to one and a quarter acres each, 264 feet by 132. A city ordinance places the houses twenty feet behind the front line of the lot, leaving an intermediate place for shrubbery or trees. This rule, however, is not observed in Main Street. The streets are named from their direction to the Temple Block. Thus Main Street is East Temple Street No. 1; that behind it is State Boad, or East Temple Street 2, and so forth, the ward being also generally specified. Temple Block is also the point to which latitude and longitude are referred. It lies in N lat. 40° 45' 44", W. long. (G.) 112° 6' 8", and 4300 feet above sea level. Main Street is rapidly becoming crowded. The western block, opposite the hotel, contains about twenty houses of irregular shape and size. The buildings are intended to supply the principal wants of a far-Western settlement, as bakery, butchery, and black-smithery, hardware and crockery, paint and whip warehouse, a "fashionable tailor"-and "fashionable" in one point, that his works are more expensive than Poole's - shoe-stores, tannery and curriery; the Pantechnicon, on a more pretentious style than its neighbors, kept by Mr. Gilbert Clements, Irishman and orator ; dry-goods, groceries, liquors, and furniture shops, Walker's agency, and a kind of restaurant for ice-cream, a luxury which costs 25 cents a glass; saddlers, dealers in " food, flour, and provisions,"' hats, shoes, clothing, sash laths, shingles, timber, copper, tin, crockery-ware, carpenters' tools, and mouse-traps; a watch- |
