TIMPANOGOS AND WEBER CANONES.—VALLEY OF GREAT SALT LAKE. 61 
cañones on both of these streams—one upon the Timpanogos, and two upon the Weber. The 
former is ten miles in length. It is from 100 to 300 yards wide, and very direct in its gen- 
eral course; but projecting masses or spurs on either side of the river overlap partially, giving 
ita slightly sinuous course at the bottom. The great mass of the rock of which it is formed 
is blue limestone, on the south side often nearly vertical, but more inclined and open and 
covered with ioni stones and a luxuriant growth of vegetation on the north side, along which 
we rode. It will be necessary, in passing it with a railway, to bridge the river at several points 
to avoid curves, and to blast the rocks to a considerable extent at some points, amounting, how- 
ever, to no large aggregate. The river is thirty yards wide, descending with a powerful current. 
The upper cañon on the Weber deserves the name only of a gorge or defile. It is eight and a 
half miles in length. The passage is more broad and open, and not so direct as that of the 
cafion twelve miles below, on the border of the valley of Great Salt lake. The mountains rise 
to a great height above it, and are rocky and precipitous, and much broken by ravines. The 
river winds from side to side, frequently striking against the base of the mountains, and the 
path crosses it frequently; and in constructing a railroad it will be necessary to bridge it 
several times. But it can be built by cutting and filling at the base of the mountains with the 
same facility that roads are carried elsewhere at mountain bases, where the formidable name of 
cañon is not encountered. The lower cañon, which is four miles long, in some parts wel 
deserves the name. It is, however, very direct, with an average width of 175 yards, the stream 
being 30 yards wide, üj frequently impinging with great force against the base of the mount- 
ains. Ata single goin only, near the head of the cañon, the river is narrowed to one half its 
usual width, 30 yards, and has cut a passage 20 or 30 feet deep through the solid rock, which 
on the north side, at this point, overhangs the stream, which is deflected from its course by a 
low projecting mass, for a few yards, but again immediately resumes it. The rocks are prin- 
cipally gneiss. The mountains are sufficiently retreating to admit of a practicable passage 
of the gorge by a railway, and it will require an amount of blasting no greater than is required 
in constructing a road on a rocky mountain side of similar extent elsewhere. Entering the 
valley of Great Salt lake from either this or the Timpanogos cañon, a railway meets with no 
obstruction in passing by the south end of the lake and crossing the Jordan, Tuilla valley, and 
Spring or Lone Rock valley, to its west side, the grades being merely nominal. 
The settlement and cultivation of this valley by the twenty-seven thousand industrious people 
who inhabit it—the number at which the church authorities estimated their population when 
I was among them, and it did not seem to be an exaggeration—is so obviously a matter of 
great importance in connection with the construction of a continental railway, that only the 
simple statement of its being embraced in this line is necessary, and that its construction is 
object which the Mormons are anxious to assist in accomplishing. From the western shore of 
Great Salt lake to the valley of Humboldt river, the country consists alternately of mountains, 
in more or less isolated ranges, and open, level plains, rising gradually from the level of the 
lake on the east to the base of the Humboldt mountains on the west, or from 4,200 feet to 6,000 
feet above the sea. Cedar mountain lies immediately on the southwestern shore of the lake, 
and gradually subsides towards the north, terminating in Strong’s Knob. But to pass entirely 
around it would unnecessarily increase the length of the line, for it can be crossed, not only by 
the line followed by Frémont in 1845, at an elevation of 800 feet above the lake, but apparently 
at a much lower elevation, a few indes north of this point. Immediately west of this range 
there occurs a desert plain of mud, about seventy miles in width from east to west, by its longest 
line, which becomes narrowed to forty, and eventually entirely disappears as it extends south- 
ward—less than thirty of which is miry by this line—and it is firm in proportion to the distance 
from the lake. Two or three small isolated rocky ranges stand in it, but it appears otherwise 
to the eye, as level as a sheet of water. To the west this desert is succeeded by broken mount- 
ain ranges, one of which is terminated towards the south near Pilot Peak, affording the means of 
reaching and passing to the succeeding plain. Tothe south of this passage, however, an equally 
