Small need to tell how expectancy grew upon us as the number of miles ahead became less and less. Even those who had at last apparently grown apathetic and walked silently along, or sat questionless in the wagons, began to again manifest the same eager interest which had marked the days of our starting out. Wake up! wake up! wake up! Fun and frolic must sometimes take the place of sentiment and sobriety, and so one who was ever brimming over with both, could not wait the poetic summons of the clarionet. Beating together two old tin pans he frisked around the corral, rousing with the unseemly noise all laggards and slug-a-beds.
“Cliffs of Echo Canon.” This brings us within the borders of Utah. We had climbed from Green River to Cache Cave, we looked upon the one range of hills, the one only, that divided us from our destination. Clear shone the September sun, as our long train moved slowly under the conglomerate cliffs; slowly, for half of the cattle were footsore, and all very weary. Several hours were consumed in passing through the wild defile, and night was falling ere the mouth of the canon was reached. Later, as the camp-fires were blazing, the full moon illuminated the fantastic scene.
Who of all those who traversed Echo Canon in an ox-train will forget the shouting, the cracking of whips, the wild halloes, and the pistol-shots that resounded along the line, or the echoes, all confused by the multitude of sounds, and passing through each other like the concentric rings on a still pond when we throw in a handful of pebbles, flying from cliff to cliff, and away up in the shaggy ravine and seeming to come back at last from the sky.
“O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying;
Blow, bugle, answer echoes, dying, dying, dying.”
No wonder the place recalls Tennyson’s song, but, it must be told, there were none of “the horns of Elfland faintly blowing” about the wild hilarity of sounds which were sent back from the cliffs that day.
The last sketch in the book is “A Glimpse of the Valley.” Not one in our company but what felt the heart swell with joy as the sight of fields and orchards, in the latter of which hung ripened fruit, burst upon our sight. Danger and fatigues were all forgotten. The stubborn, interminable miles were conquered, “The Journey” was at an end.
Transcriber's Note
A Table of Contents has been added by the transcriber for the convenience of the reader.
Variations in spelling are preserved as printed, e.g. unforseen, traveler, traveller, enmass, canon.