through Chokup Pass, are at once over the 116th parallel and the Nevada line,then our little Switzer has his own private jubilee in his own original way. While we stop to change horses he dances a pas-seul, which fills a family of Digger Indians, pensioning on the station-keeper, with admiration and dismay; he snaps his fingers; he shakes his fist to the eastward in sublime menace to a whole Territory at once; and finally, having expended the bottled feelings of the last three weeks, he rejoins us, wiping the perspiration from his face with a handkerchief. The fact of meeting Mormons on the instant of stepping foot into the Territory did not surprise us, for we had by no means waited so long as this to make their first acquaintance on the Overland road. They are strewn all along from the Missouri River to San Francisco. Some of them are avowed, others known only to the initiated, others undoubtedly not known at all. A Mormon and his wife formerly kept the station at Liberty Farm, one hundred and ninetythree miles west of Atchison. Several of them I have known among drivers, numbers among stablehelpers and stock-tenders. They are, so far as I know, unblamable in the discharge of their duties; in fact, they must attend to their business as well as anybody obtainable for their places, or they would not be kept twenty-four hours under the strict regime of Ben Holladay. None of them are out of Utah in disgrace; they keep up their relations with the Church government as closely as ever. They are detailed to duty on the Church's behalf. Their enemies call them by the invidious name of spies. It is certainly the case, that, by some means or other, nothing happens along the great avenues to Salt Lake, of which Brigham Young does not get the earliest advices. He is never surprised at the arrival of any person in his capital. Long before your arrival is announced in the "Deseret News," he has a memorandum of your name, your residence, your appearance, your circumstances, your purpose in coming to Utah, your intended length of stay there, and (unless you are enough of an old traveller to know "a pump at first sight, and keep your likes and dislikes to yourself in all promiscuous companies) your animus towards Mormonism, your value as an ally, and the importance of providing against you, or propitiating you if you are a foe. The secret police system of France was never more efficient than Brigham Young's; and, considering the much vaster territory that lies under his organized espionage, I might be justified in saying that in efficiency none ever equaled his. As a ruler of men, I think the earth has scarcely had his peer. The "one-man power" system is hastening towards its final extinction, but its last days are its greatest. It dies giving birth to two of its grandest examplars in a single age-Louis Napoleon and Brigham Young. I do not think the grandson of the Creole a match for the Ontario County ploughboy. Brigham Young is a religious fanatic; Napoleon has no enthusiasm of any sort; but I believe that the fanatic has the cooler business head. He would never have sent an expedition to Mexico. crimes, but he does not "do what blunders." He may commit is worse, make After leaving Green River, we continued our way across a country of the same sterile aspect as that described the day before. The occurrence of extensive level tracts, covered with water-worn pebbles, still testified to the former existence of much larger bodies of water that are now compressed into the numerous but narrow tributaries of the Green. The temperature was truly delightful, standing not far from 70° F. all day long, with a light breeze from the northwest which we found very pleasant, except in the vicinity of sand dunes, where its addition of powder to our toilet could have been spared. We saw numerous sage-fowl during the day, as tame as barnyard turkeys; but having secured all the specimens we needed, and having no idea of adding them to our larder, had no motive for shooting them. I deeply regret the impossibility of having taken a number of them alive to the States with me on my return. They would make a most valuable addition to our poultry yards, and I can see not the slightest obstacle to their domestication. About four o'clock in the afternoon we suddenly came upon one of the grandest marvels which Nature has given to human admiration on this Continent. This is "The Church Buttes." I have had frequent occasion in these pages to refer to that remarkable class of formations which, though not entirely absent from the scenery of our Atlantic slope, exist in so few instances (as the Catskill, Franconia, and Niagara Profile Rocks) that they have never attracted more than passing attention; while, throughout the savage interior of the Continent, they have attained the same neglect by the opposite reason of their very frequency. We go out of our way to lavish raptures upon the temples of Yucatan, the mausolea of Dongola, Nubia, and Petrea, the Sphinx, and the Cave of Elephanta, while throughout our own mountain fastnesses and trackless plains |