Page:California Historical Society Quarterly vol 22.djvu/151

 that has greeted us on the trip we descended the hill without accident and well sattisiied with our days work

August 7 Tuesday This morning for a mile our road lay up a steep hill on arriving at the top we halted for a while then decended a sharp pitch into a ravine with a rapid runing stream of cold water after crossing the stream 19 times brought us in full view of the Valley and a more beautifull sight could not be presented to our view hundreds of acres of corn wheat and vegetables we moved through the main street [of Salt Lake City] and camped on what is calld the commons outside the city fence we gave our mules over to the herdsman for a few days and prepared ourselves to enjoy the good things of the Valley for a few days distance traveled today 1 2 miles

Aug 8 ^49 Today we have looked about the city for information respect- ing the wisest way to finish our trip and have decided to pack our mules and shove through and have made arrangements for our packs and disposed of some of our waggons in exchange

Today our party took dinner with Mr. ha J. Williss one of the Mormon battallion who was in Cat on the discovery of gold his brother was in the trench to work for Sutter when the discovery was made^^ Ira gave us some verry grattifying inteligence of the abundance of the filthy lucre We shall be better sattisfied when we see for ourselves

Aug ijth 1849 After a weeks sojourn with the Mormons we leave today with regretts haveing received the kindest attention from all we have had to do with. On the tenth we pitched our Marque tent and invited Elder Tay- lor^^ to address us on the general items that constitute the Mormon creed he spoke to us in verry plain talk of the treatment they received in the States and wo be to those men that were active in the persecution if they ever enter the City we were visited several times in our stay by President [Brigham ] Young their leading prophet (for they beleive in prophets and Bishops and all the ancient organization of society) He seemed to be a fine man the people generally are a verry social people and hospitable and you may be- lieve that the vegetables had to suffer while we stoped. The City is laid out in squares on a good plan streets wide they irrigate the soil haveing plenty of water from the Kenyons near by have raised this season some excellent wheat and the valley for a hundred miles will be good tillage land. The people give one tenth of the products of their labor to the church for to feed the poor. they have not erected a temple as yet but intend to soon as they have raised grain to keep them the while. While we have been here it has been verry warm in the Valley but at a distance of sixteen miles the peaks of the Mountains are ever covered with snow we did not visit the Lake some 20 miles distant expecting to pass near it on our way There is one place of interest that we frequently visited was a warm sidpher spring one mile above the citv and reputed healthy it was uncomfortably warm on