XXXVI
SALT LAKE AND THE WASATCH.
Behind, the silent snows; and wide below,
The rounded hills made level, lessening down
To where a river washed with sluggish flow
A many-templed town.
—Bayard Taylor.
One day we all went out to the great Salt Lake, as in duty bound. You might as well go to Mecca and fail to see the tomb of the Prophet, as to visit Deseret and avoid the lake. It is a ride of twenty miles by rail, and the fare for the round trip is only fifty cents. Two trains are run every day in summer, and they are especially well-filled on Sundays. The cars used are chiefly open ones, with seats crosswise, like those run to Brighton and the other Beaches from New York, and it would be good fun in itself to go racing in this free way across the breezy desert between the city and the lake, even if there were not the salt waves at the end of the journey.
For, of course, the only object in going to the lake—or at any rate the prime object—is the bathing. There are two or three landings, all much alike, and not far apart; which one it was we stopped at, I have forgotten, and it doesn’t matter. One is called Garfield and another Black Rock, after a great cubic mass of lava that stands out of the water a little way from shore like the end of a huge ruined pier.