VALLEY OF GREAT SALT LAKE. 63 



Now let us look for a momsnt at tlie land which they inhabit, 

 and see how they found it. Just think of our land. If we get 

 into the cars in Boston, and go on day and night, day and night, 

 and yet day and night, we begin to have some appreciation of 

 the extent of this wonderful land of ours. But after we have 

 crossed the Missouri River, having gone fifteen hundred miles — 

 for you are not fairly started towards Salt Lake until you reach 

 Omaha, and have found the Union Pacific Railroad — we start 

 from there, and, gradually rising, find at once that we are in a 

 different region. The herbage becomes short. It is a treeless 

 region, except where the water-courses are. We go still fur- 

 ther, and the grass disappears. As we go on, mounting higher 

 and higher, we find ourselves passing at Sherman, nearly two 

 thousand feet higher than the top of Mount Washington. 

 Take " Greylock," the highest point in Massachusetts, and take 

 up another " Greylock " right from the ocean and pile it upon 

 the top of " Greylock," and then far above that the cars will 

 be moving, as we find them at Sherman. So that the valleys 

 among the Rocky Mountains are vastly higher than the highest 

 land we have in Massachusetts. The lowest point in the valley 

 of Salt Lake is over four thousand feet above the level of the 

 ocean, so that if we could sweep everything away from it, Salt 

 Lake Valley would stand as a lofty mountain as compared with 

 the general level. But as we pass on, we come to lofty moun- 

 tains — the vast range of the Wahsatch. Deep rifts cut through 

 them, called " canons," through which we pass, and as we look 

 up on either side, we see immense limestone walls grooved by 

 the old glaciers that have left their marks upon the solid layers 

 of quartz. And then we see the streams rolling onward as they 

 have rolled so many thousands of years, and carrying down, 

 east and west, into the central portions of the continent, the 

 water from the snows that have fallen on those mountains. 



We have here what is called the Great American Desert ; 

 and the question arises in our minds, constantly pressing itself 

 upon us as we go on, hundreds and hundreds of miles across 

 this desert, Is it possible that this land can become anything 

 more to the American people than just so much solid earth to 

 hold the world together? Is it worth anything? Acres and 

 acres, miles and miles of sage-brush, so called, that is, a kind 

 of wormwood, that will only grow where water seldom if ever 



