STEEP TRAILS 



profound shadowy canons, while moraines 

 commensurate with the lofty fountains extend 

 into the valleys, forming far the grandest series 

 of glacial monmnents I have yet seen this side 

 of the Sierra, 



In beginning this letter I meant to describe 

 the city, but in the company of these noble old 

 mountains, it is not easy to bend one's atten- 

 tion upon anything else. Salt Lake cannot be 

 called a very beautiful town, neither is there 

 anything ugly or repulsive about it. From the 

 slopes of the Wahsatch foothills, or old lake 

 benches, toward Fort Douglas it is seen to 

 occupy the sloping gravelly delta of City 

 Creek, a fine, hearty stream that comes pouring 

 from the snows of the mountains through a 

 majestic glacial canon; and it is just where this 

 stream comes forth into the light on the edge 

 of the valley of the Jordan that the Mormons 

 have built their new Jerusalem. 



At first sight there is nothing very marked 

 in the external appearance of the town except- 

 ing its leafiness. Most of the houses are veiled 

 with trees, as if set down in the midst of one 

 grand orchard; and seen at a Uttle distance 

 they appear like a field of glacier boulders 

 overgrown with aspens, such as one often meets 

 in the upper valleys of the California Sierra, 

 for only the angular roofs are clearly visible. 



106 



