20 THE SEA. 



One of the best features of this strange community is the marked absence of 

 drunkenness and profligacy. Most Mormons are teetotallers, and drink little more than 

 tea or coffee, or the crystal water which runs in deep brooks through every street, and has 

 its birth in the heights of the beautiful snow-clad Wahsatch Mountains, which are a 

 great feature in the scenery of Salt Lake Valley. Salt Lake City has a remarkable 

 building, known by the faithful as " The Tabernacle," and by the irreverent as the " Big 

 Egg-shell," from the oval form of its roof. It holds 8,000 persons, or, un.ler pressure, 

 even more. It has an organ in point of size the second in America. The writer 

 attended a service there, given in honour of some missionary Mormons who were 

 about to part for Europe. The Salt Lake theatre is another feature of the place, and 

 has a good company of Mormon amateur actors and actresses. We once saw there 

 some twenty-five of Brig-ham Young's family in the front rows of the pit. Formerly, 

 it is said, payment at the doors was taken " in kind," and a Mormon would deposit at the 

 box-office a ham, a plump sucking-pig not alive a bag of dried peaches, or a dozen 

 mop-handles, maybe, for his seats ! 



Taking a last glimpse of the great Salt Lake, passing Corinne, where, when it was 

 only six weeks old, a bank and a newspaper office, both in tents, had been established, 

 the train proceeds through a more or less barren district on its way to Nevada, the 

 Silver State, a country where, for the most part, life is only endurable when one is 

 making money rapidly. Those who would see some of the silver mines with com- 

 parative ease "get off" the train at Reno, thence proceeding by branch rail to 

 Virginia City and Gold Hill, places where that form of mining* life may be studied 

 to perfection. So great has been the yield of the Nevada and other silver mines of 

 adjoining territories, that, as most of us know, the value of silver has actually 

 depreciated. Some of the millionaires of San Francisco gained their wealth in 

 Nevada. 



In the United States the distances between leading places is so great that the 

 fares charged, albeit generally moderate, cannot suit slender purses, while empty pockets 

 are nowhere. In consequence many attempt to smuggle themselves through. The writer 

 remembers, in about the part of the route under notice, a " dead-head" who had for 

 several stations managed to elude the notice of the guard, but who was at last detected, 

 and put off at a point a dozen or more miles from the nearest settlement. The " dead- 

 head," like the stowaway on board ship, of whom as many as fourteen have been concealed 

 on a single vessel, and not one of them discovered by the proper authorities till far out at 

 sea, is an unrecognised institution on the railways of the United States. Perhaps because our 

 ticket system is more rigidly enforced, few attempt to take a free passage on English 

 railways, although it is stated that a sailor was found, some little time since, asleep under 

 a carriage, his arms and legs coiled round the brake-rods, having succeeded in nearly 

 making the trip from London to Liverpool undiscovered. But, then, sailors are hardened 

 to jars and shocks and noises, by being accustomed to the warring of the elements and 

 so forth. The reader may remember that when, some few years ago, a Great Western 

 train intersected and completely cut in two another which crossed its path, a sailor was 

 found asleep on the seat of a half third-class carriage, and that he was quite angry 



