Towers and battlements it sees,
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where, perhaps some Beauty lies
The Cynosure of neighboring eyes.
—Milton.
Nebo does not long remain in sight from our windows; for speedily we swing out into the sloping valley land, bringing into close companionship on the right the northern half of the Wasatch range, which, were it a trifle more arctic and bristling aloft, would remind us strongly of the Sangre de Cristo. On each side now are spread wide areas of grain field and grassland, with abundant hedges and thickets and orchards surrounding clusters of houses and barns. The train makes frequent halts at little villages, which seem to have been built along both sides of the track, because the reverse process occurred and the rails were laid in the middle of the main street. The first of these farmer-settlements was Spanish Fork (the Palmyra of old settlers) where, not long ago, a copper image of the Virgin Mary was dug up, together with some fragments of a human skeleton. “This takes back the Mormon settlement of to-day to the long ago time when Spanish missionaries preached of the Pope to the Piutes, and gave but little satisfaction to either man or beast, for their tonsured scalps were but scanty trophies, and the coyote found their lean bodies but poor picking.” A few miles further is Springville, hidden in well-watered trees, where a stream tumbling out of a mysteriously dark cañon just behind the town, turns the wheels of extensive flour mills and woolen factories.
It is with growing and animated interest, that we pass on through miles of fertile farmland and come into plain sight of Utah Lake,—a glassy sheet of water beyond which loom through their mist the vague forms of many angular hills. The water is fresh, and none of the barrenness that has smitten the shores of the Salt sea northward accurses this beautiful lake, with which the Indians strangely enough, associated many evil influences and dark legends. Between us and the shore stretch vast meadows of green prairie grasses and bulrushes, upon which herds of sleek cattle and fine horses were grazing. Except upon the western side, where the hills yield no water, there is a semicircle of villages at the feet of the encompassing hills, with checkered fields of grain and fodder between the embowered clusters of houses and the swampy meadows along shore. Sometimes the meadows and gardens, the squares of wheat and Indian corn come clear down to the shore.
