Page:The City of the Saints.djvu/341

Rh the Wasach Mountains, robed in forests, mist-crowned, and showing a single streak of white, which entitles them to the poetical boast of eternal snow—snow apparently never being respectable without eternity.

After fifteen miles of good road we came to the Point o' the Mountain—the head of the Oquirrh, also called West Mountain—where pyramidal buttes bound the southern extremity of the lake. Their horizontal lines are cleanly cut by the action of water, and fall in steps toward the plain. Any appearance of regularity in the works of Nature is always pleasing—firstly, because it contrasts with her infinite diversity; and, secondly, because it displays her grandeur by suggesting comparison with the minor works of mankind. Ranches and corrals, grass and cattle, now began to appear, and the entrance of a large cave was pointed out to me in the base of the buttes. We drove on, and presently emerged upon the shores of this "dead and desert"—this "still and solitary" sea. It has not antiquity enough to have become the scene of fabulous history; the early Canadian voyageurs, however, did their best to ennoble it, and recounted to wondering strangers its fearful submarine noises, its dark and sudden storms, and the terrible maelstrom in its centre, which, funnel-like, descended into the bowels of the earth. I believe that age is its only want; with quasi-lifeless waters, a balance of evaporation and supply—ever a mystery to the ignorant—and a horned frog, the Dead Sea of the New World has claims to preternaturalism at least equal to those of its sister feature, the volcano of depression, in the Old Hemisphere.

The first aspect of Mare Mortuum was by no means unprepossessing. As we stood upon the ledge, at whose foot lies the selvage of sand and salt that bounds the wave, we seemed to look upon the sea of the Cyclades. The sky was light and clear, the water of a deep lapis-lazuli blue, flecked here and there with the smallest of white horses—tiny billows, urged by the warm soft wind; and the feeble tumble of the surf upon the miniature sands reminded me, with the first surveyor, "of scenes far, far away, where mightier billows pay their ceaseless tribute to the strand." In front of us, and bounding the extreme northwest, lay Antelope or Church Island, rising in a bold central ridge. This rock forms the western horizon to those looking from the city, and its delicate pink—the effect of a ruddy carpet woven with myriads of small flowers—blushing in the light of the setting sun, is ever an interesting and beautiful object. Nearer, it has a brown garb, almost without a tinge of green, except in rare, scattered spots; its benches, broken by gashes and gullies, rocks and ravines, are counterparts to those on the main land; and its form and tintage, softened by the damp overhanging air, and contrasting with the light blue sky and the dark ultramarine streak of sea at its base, add greatly to the picturesqueness of the view. The foreground