I walked around the banks and at one end of the lake there was a hole so deep I couldn't see bottom. This is a crater-hole so deep that bottom has never been found, although it has been sounded to a depth of several thousand feet. The entire place looks like the crater of an extinct volcano. A single glance would lead anyone to suppose so.
Indian men, women, boys and girls go to the lake during the warm seasons to bathe, and many a daring buck who has swum across the crater was drowned in it and his body has never been recovered. I needed a bath myself so I disrobed and plunged in. The water was neither too hot nor too cold but half way between the two. It was just right. Where I swam was not in the crater but near it. The water there was part crater water and part sulphur water from the springs. The bath was delicious.
The ride eastward from Elko was uneventful. There was nothing to see but bare plains and mountains and a few border towns. The towns were very small, and hardly more than railroad stations. They were composed of a general store or two, several saloons, a blacksmith shop, drug store, bakery, butchershop, barbershop, and that is all.
I boarded a freight train at Wells and rode the brakes through the Lucin Cutoff to Ogden. The trains used to run around Salt Lake, but now a trestle has been built through it, which saves many miles. The trestle is forty or fifty miles long, I should judge, and as I clung tightly to my perch on the brakebeam and looked down into the clear blue water through the ties I got kind of dizzy, but met with no disaster.
After a long and tedious ride of several hours I reached Ogden, the end of the S. P. line. As funds were low I remained in Ogden several days and went to work.
Ogden is in Utah and full of Mormons. It is a beautiful city, surrounded by lofty mountains, the Wasatch range, and contains about 50,000 people. It has a Mormon tabernacle, tithe-house, broad streets, fine stores, elegant public buildings and is quite a railroad center.
I happened to discover a Mormon lady who had a wood-pile in her back yard and she was needing a man to chop the wood, so we struck a bargain. I was to receive a dollar and a half per day and my board for my work and was given a room in an outhouse to bunk in. The terms suited me. The board was plentiful and good, and the sleeping quarters comfortable. I never saw a man about the place and wondered whether the lady was married or not. She was old enough to be. I knew she was a Mormon because she told me so, and possibly she was the plural wife of some rich old Mormon. I didn't like to ask too many questions for I might have got fired for being too nosy. The lady was sociable and kind-hearted and treated me well.
The Mormons like apples, cider and ladies, and they are an industrious people. The Bible says they can have all the wives they want, but the United States law says they can't have 'em, so what are the poor fellows to do? Sh! They have 'em on the sly. Don't give me away. Can you blame a rich old Mormon for having a big bunch of wives if he can support them? If I had the price I'd have two, at least, one for week days and one for Sundays, but if the mother-in-law is thrown in, I pass. One good healthy mother-in-law of the right sort can make it mighty interesting for a fellow, but a bunch of them; whew! Excuse me! During my stay in Ogden I didn't see any funny business going on, and wouldn't have suspected there was any, but from what I could learn on the outside, there was something doing. I saw lots of rosy-cheeked Mormon girls in the tabernacle one day when I was there, but they behaved just like other girls. The tabernacle is a church and it ain't. It is an immense egg-shaped building arranged very peculiarly, yet it is snug and cosy inside. It can hold thousands of people. It must be seen to be appreciated. I liked Ogden very much and would like to linger there longer but I deemed it best to keep a moving.
After leaving Ogden the scenery became interesting. The country is mountainous going eastward, and we struck a place called Weber Canyon, which is a narrow pass between high mountains through which the railroad winds. The mountains were pretty well wooded. In one spot I saw a place called the Devil's Slide, which was made by nature and consists of two long narrow ledges of rocks that begin high up on a mountain side and run down almost to the bottom of the mountain where the car tracks are. These rocks form two continuous lines that run down side by side with a space of several feet between them, and they are rough and raggedy on top. Imagine two rails with about four or five feet of space between them running down a mountain side several hundred feet and then you will have some idea of the formation of the slide. How in the devil the devil rode it, gets me. He must have been pretty broad in the beam, and I would like to have seen him when he performed the act. He must have come down a-flying, for the slide is nearly perpendicular.