130 A CALIFORNIA TRAMP. 



became quite fashionable. These walks, while they kept the 

 blood in circulation, greatly gratified the owners of the teams, 

 as the loads were thereby lightened, and a proportionate 

 amount of mule and horse muscle economized. The team- 

 sters, who for the most part owned their teams, were very 

 careful of their animals during the forepart of the journey, 

 that they might be the better enabled to accomplish the latter, 

 which lay wholly over deserts. Our diurnal drives were 

 rarely over twenty miles, and generally ten or fifteen, and 

 besides the grass which the animals would pick during the 

 night, liberal rations of wheat were given them before and 

 after the day's drive. We commenced ascending the caiion by 

 daylight the next morning, and as it was two miles to the 

 summit of the mountain to which it led, and as the road was 

 slippery from the snow which covered it, the ascent was toil- 

 some to the teams as well as to ourselves, who trudged by their 

 sides. Scattered cedars were growing on the sides and sum- 

 mit of the mountain, their verdant foliage comparing agree- 

 ably with the snow-whitened earth. Descending the southern 

 slope over a rough road, we entered Cedar Valley — a broad 

 mountain-encircled plain — and crossing another divide, we 

 reached Fillmore Valley. We came to Fillmore City late 

 in the evening, and halted a while to await the coming of 

 some of our delayed wagons. This city is situated one 

 hundred and sixty miles south from Salt Lake and consists 

 of about a dozen hovels overshadowed by a State House. 

 The latter, which has been built but a short time, is one of 

 the finest buildings in the Territory. Uncle Samuel's purse 

 was phlebotomized copiously during its erection, for in this 

 out-of-the-way place the mice could play to their satisfaction 

 during the absence of the cat. The plan of the building is in 

 the shape of a Greek cross, but at present only one wing was 

 completed. This was built of rough-hewn red sandstone, and 

 was the only stone building I saw in the Territory. 



