In the Mountains 17 



were men past middle life, gray headed, gray mustached, when 

 they were not clean shaven, with an awake and responsible bearing 

 that put them in a class by themselves. One such, a conductor 

 with a prelatically cleancut face and a bearing that would have 

 graced an archbishop, who has been on the road traveling that 

 run for thirty-five years, admitted me to a pleasant conversa- 

 tional fellowship between stations. 



The hills are sliding by, sliding by. Down, down, down we go 

 from the summit. Every section crew we pass waves a friendly 

 greeting. The sky is clear, the air is crisp — a wine-like air in 

 truth. From the meadows rise the buffalo birds in flocks, alter- 

 nated with scattered Colorado magpies, and once, a flock of crows. 



"OGDEN, Next stop." 



"Check your baggage, Jimmy. We change for Salt Lake 

 City here." 



The baggage is transferred and we wait for our train to be made 

 up. In the interval I reflect again on the splendid sustained chords 

 of the descent down the long grades, timed by the tympani of the 

 rail joints, and irregularly crescendoing into the diapasoned roar — 

 the full orchestra — a score of octaves deep, of some culvert whose 

 piers and girders all together chant our passing. 



Leaving Ogden, the meadows open wider. The Lombardy 

 poplars, that for an hour past have been seen scattered singly and 

 in twos and threes, now form into files, double column of twos, 

 and battalions. 



"That 's the Mormons, Jimmy," William informs me. "They 

 planted those poplars all over the shop. Wherever in this part 

 of the West you see the Lombardy poplar, that's a Mormon 

 colony." 



Farmstead succeeds farmstead, always and ever with trees 

 planted round about. In the river bottoms, below the floor of 

 the valley, the cottonwoods lean to the wind. 



"Jimmy, that's the Great Salt Lake, and the Wasatch Range." 

 And as 1 look, adding the seen splendor of the great chain that 

 bluely floats above the quiet waters to the little I recollect of that 

 dramatic chapter of the West's history, I pick up a sentence here 

 and there of the summary of Mormon history — the past and 

 present status of the faith, moral and politico-social reasons for 

 the institution of polygamy, that William is delivering to two 



