Page:The City of the Saints.djvu/365

Rh over with earth brought from a distance: Mormon energy overcame every obstacle. It is repaired every summer before the anniversary festival; it suffers during the autumn, and is preserved from destruction by the winter snows. In many places there are wooden bridges, one of which pays toll, and at the end of the season they become not a little rickety. As may be imagined, the water-power has been utilized. Lines and courses carefully leveled, and in parts deeply excavated, lest the precious fluid should spread out in basins, are brought from afar, and provided with water-gates and coffer-dams. The mills are named after the letters C, B, A, D, and lastly E. Already 700,000 square feet of lumber have been cut during this summer, and a total of a million is expected before the mills are snowed up; you come upon these ugly useful erections suddenly, round a sharp turn in the bed; they have a queer effect with their whirring saws and crash of timber, forming a treble to the musical bass of the water-gods.

We halted at the several mills, when Mr. Little overlooked his accounts, and distributed stores of coffee, sugar, and tobacco. After the first five miles we passed flecks of snow; the thermometer, however, in the shade never showed less than 60° F. In places the hill sides were bald from the effect of avalanches, and we saw where a house had lately been swept away. In others a fine white limestone glistened its deception. After passing Mill D, we debouched upon the basin also called the Big Prairie, a dwarf turfy savanna, about 100 yards in diameter, rock and tree girt, and separated from Parley's Kanyon on the north by a tall, narrow wall. We then ascended a slope of black, viscid, slippery mud, in which our animals were nearly mired, with deep slush-holes and cross-roots: as we progressed the bridges did not improve. On our left, in a pretty grove of thin pines, stood a bear-trap. It was a dwarf hut, with one or two doors, which fall when Cuffy tugs the bait from the figure of 4 in the centre. These mountaineers apparently ignore the simple plan of the Tchuvash, who fill up with corn-brandy a hollow in some tree lying across "old Ephraim's" path, and catch him dead drunk. In many places the quaking-asp trunks were deeply indented with claw-scars, showing that the climbing species is here common. Shortly before, a bear had been shot within a few miles of Great Salt Lake City, and its paws appeared upon the hotel table d'hôte.

About mid afternoon we dismounted, and left our nags and traps at Mill E, the highest point, where we were to pass the night. Mr. Little was suffering from a severe neuralgia, yet he insisted upon accompanying us. With visions of Albano, Killarney, and Windermere, I walked up the half mile of hill separating us from Great Cotton-wood Lake. In front rose tall pine-clad and snow-strewed peaks, a cul de sac formed by the summit of the Wasach. We could not see their feet, but instinct told me that they dropped around the water. The creek narrowed to a jump.