i 5 6 MY LIFE 



nei Wc had supper at Cheyenne, good, but a Crush; and 



then turned west up the slope towards a pass in the Rocky 



Mountains. The valley we ascended was among rounded 



hills, more like our downs than mountains. Though the 

 Country was quite wild, there were here and there lines of 

 high posts and rails of strong, rough timber, sometimes on 

 one side sometimes on the other, sometimes below and some- 

 times above the level of the railway. These, I was told, 

 were snow-guards, and were placed just where experience 

 showed they would check the drifts and keep the line clear. 

 In a few places there were snow-sheds with one or two short 

 tunnels, and we reached the summit level at 8 p. m., only 8240 

 feet above the sea. The next morning we were going through 

 similar rolling, half-desert scenery, with greasewood bushes 

 and bare sand or mud flats white with alkali. At Green river, 

 one of the upper tributaries of the great Colorado river, we 

 got into more picturesque scenery, with rocks standing up 

 like castles, and further on rocky valleys, with wind-worn 

 rocks in strange detached pinnacles. Fine precipices occur 

 at Echo Canon and Weber's Canon. The Devil's Slide is 

 formed by two vertical dykes descending a steep mountain- 

 side only two or three feet apart, leaving a narrow passage 

 or " slide " between them. 



Reaching Ogden in the afternoon, I took the train to Salt 

 Lake City, passing the fine highly cultivated plain on the 

 shores of Salt Lake, the fields being all irrigated. Some of 

 the meadows were blue with the beautiful Camassia esculenta, 

 an easily grown garden plant with us. I spent next morning 

 roaming about the city and suburbs. The tabernacle is a 

 wonderful hall that will seat six thousand persons, and is so 

 shaped that a speaker at one end can be heard distinctly 

 over the whole building when speaking in an ordinary con- 

 versational tone. To produce this effect it is a flat semi- 

 ellipsoid, so that the regularly curved ceiling is very low for 

 the size of the building. But the result is acoustically perfect, 

 and such as none of our architects have equalled. 



The city itself is in many respects unique and admirable. 

 It is a kind of "Garden" city, since every house (except in 



