SALT LAKE REGION SPRINGS. 195 



SALT LAKE REGION SPRINGS. 



UTAH, in its history, as far as science has yet recorded its 

 wonders in the domain of nature, or common fame reported 

 its political and spiritual phases of development, (only calcu- 

 lable by the philosophy of the extreme ancients,) is to the 

 illuminated side of the continent a region of perpetual fable. 

 It would seem, in its geological relationship, from the heat 

 of its rocks and waters, not far from the region of original 

 fire ; still closer, in the estimation of the Christian world, to 

 the region of original sin, from the ardency of its social code, 

 and the anomalously distracted religion and morality which 

 prevails in the only effort which this progressive American 

 has as yet made to reclaim these wonderful deserts, humanize 

 the wilderness, and assert the presence of man on a spot of 

 the earth's surface apparently, from physical limitations and 

 spiritual perversions, accursed of the living God. It is thus 

 that the yarn of the tourist through this peculiar region, in 

 the report of its natural history, seems Munchausen, roman- 

 tic, and impossible ; while the historian of the present ver- 

 sion of the social contract, or organization of society pa- 

 triarchal, at that point of the globe, is as inconceivable and 

 fanciful in his narrative as the story of the fictitious common- 

 wealth of the "NEW ATLANTIS," or the wonders of the 



"ClTY OF THE SUN." 



It is to be regretted that a more critical exploration of 

 the geology of this wonderful region has not been made. 

 The precise substratum or rock-structure of the valleys, 

 mountains, and deserts of the territory of Utah, has not 

 been made the subject of scientific dissection. It is thus 

 that the origin of the calorification and mineralization of 

 the innumerable springs of this region, charged with all the 

 salts of the pharmacopeia, is the subject of distant and sha- 



