Up the grand slope of the Wasatch beyond, stretches a mass of houses and a forest of shade trees, that are sweeping every instant nearer. Shade of Jehu, how we are tearing along! Swish! That was a smelter. Swish again! That was a furnace. Crash! Bang! Salt Lake City! Shall we halt? No, only a few moments to watch the crowd alight and wrestle with the hotel runners; and also to detach and arrange for the side-tracking of our two household cars. We will keep the coach and go on to Ogden while we are “in running order” as Chum says. Then we will come back to-night and stay in Salt Lake City as long as we please. So with a parting admonition to Bert we take our seats and are moving onward once more.
Here again the track for a long distance runs along the middle of a suburban street slowly traversed,—a street of lowly houses, each in its dense garden. It is not at all a bad notion of the whole city, which that glimpse gives the traveller, but shortly it is exchanged for a sage-bush-plain, followed by a region reminding us strongly of the St. Clair flats in Canada. Meadows and marshes, vividly green, stretch to the westward, diversified by planted groves of cottonwood, while mountains rise close at hand on the east. Here and there pools of calm water flit by, on whose surface large flocks of snow-white gulls sit motionless. It is a great place for blackbirds, also,—Brewer’s grakle and the yellow-headed blackbird—one of which races with the train, apparently just to show how fast he can fly. Presently the ground becomes dryer and shows wide cultivation. Stacks of hay and straw dot the level and unfenced expanse, but the houses and barns of the farmers are all at our right along the foot of the hills. They are pleasant homes, embowered in orchards, and the whole scene is sunny and peaceful.
The soil is black and loamy, the foothills green and studded with blooming farms and homesteads, the lowlands lush with long grass and willow thickets. Westward, the scene might be a replica of, say, the coast of North Carolina, for now the Great Salt Lake is in full view, and the mist which hides the mountainous islands and western shore, leaves its expanse as limitless as that of the open ocean, whence no salter breeze could blow than this morning air. We gradually approach the shore, or its bays bend forward to our straight line, and we leave the fields behind to skirt and cross a great expanse of salt whitened mud flats, where chestnut-backed plovers flit about as the only sign of life. On higher ground, just beyond, a frail pier or landing stage runs far out into the lake, where is moored a small steamboat, and two or three sailboats rest on the gently ruffled water. This is a bathing resort and picnic grounds, which hereafter will be made more of than at present. Beyond, for miles and miles, the country seems to have been one continuous wheat-field, for the golden stubble stretches in vast unfenced spaces, and we can count dozens of huge yellow stacks that have been reaped. A long ridge of dry gravel is traversed, a vista of valley land, filled full of groves, and orchards, market gardens and neat houses, opens at the base of high rocky walls and the locomotive gives its last long shriek, for this is Ogden, the terminus of our westward jaunt,—771 miles from Denver, 2,500 miles from New York, 864 miles from San Francisco.
When luncheon was over, I sat me down to my work, and the Madame began putting on her hat, making quite sure that it was straight, nor leaving the neighborhood of the mirror until wholly satisfied on that head.
“That is complimentary to Ogden!” I observe with a rising inflection.
“Not particularly,” she answers slowly. “I would want my hat to sit straight and my feather be right if I were going into a camp of Digger Shoshones. It wouldn’t feel right otherwise.”
I do not argue the question. Turning to Chum she enquires sweetly (ignoring anybody else) if he will go with her on a stroll of exploration. That young man is just filling his pipe, and the expression of anticipated delight fades utterly from his countenance.
“E-r-r,” he stammers, thinking how he may escape. “Thanks, thanks, but I can’t very well—I—I have letters to write, you know.”
“Yes, I know, everybody has, under certain circumstances. However, I can go alone. Au revoir!”
Then I sit down at work. Chum lights his pipe and lazily scratches a postal card to keep up appearances, and silence reigns for an hour or so.