Awakening with snow still all round us, and snow falling heavily as we reach Green River. And then out into a country, prodigiously rich, I was told, in petroleum, but in which I could only see that sage-brush was again asserting its claims to be seen above the snow-drift, and that wonderful arrangements in red stone thrust themselves up from the hill crests. Terraces reminding me of miniature table-mountains such as South Africa affects; sharply scarped pinnacles jutting from the ridges like the Mauritius peaks; plateaux with isolated piles of boulders; upright blocks shaped into the semblance of chimneys; crests broken into battlements, and—most striking mimicry of all snow wildernesses—a reproduction in natural rock of the great fortress of Deeg, in India. With snow instead of water, the imitation of that vast buttressed pile was singularly exact, and if there had been only a brazen sun overhead and a coppery sky flecked with circling kites, the counterfeit would have been perfect. But Deeg would crumble to pieces with astonishment if snow were to fall near it, while here there was enough to content a polar bear.
What a pity sage brush—the "three-toothed artemisia" of science—has no commercial value. Fortunes would be cheap if it had. But I heard at Leadville that a local chemist had treated the plant after the manner of cinchona, and extracted from its bark a febrifuge with which he was about to astonish the medical world and bankrupt quinine. That it has a valuable principle in cases of fever, its use by the Indians goes a little way to prove, while its medicinal properties are very generally vouched for by its being used in the West as an application for the cure of toothache, as a poultice for swellings, and a lotion ("sage oil") for erysipelas, rheumatism, and other ailments. Some day, perhaps, a fortune will be made out of it, but at present its chief value seems to be as a moral discipline to the settler and as covert for the sage-hen.
Would not the ostrich thrive upon some of these prodigious tracts of unalterable land? Can all America not match the African karoo shrub, which the camel-sparrow loves? Ostrich farming has some special recommendations, especially for "the sons of gentlemen" and others disinclined for arduous labour, who have not much of either money or brains to start with. Is it not a matter of common notoriety that when pursued this fowl buries its head in the sand, and thus, of course, falls an easy prey to the intending farmer? If, on the other hand, he does not want the whole of the bird, he has only to stand by and pluck its feathers out, which, having its head buried, it cannot, of course perceive. (These feathers fetch a high price in the market.) Supposing, however, that the adventurous emigrant wishes to undertake ostrich farming bona fide, he has merely to pull the birds out from the sand, and drive them into an enclosure—which he will, of course, have previously made—and sit on the gate and watch them lay their eggs. When they lay eggs, ostriches—this is also notorious—bury them in the sand and desert them, and the gentleman's son on the fence can then go and pick them out of the sand. (Ostriches' eggs fetch five pounds apiece.) These birds, moreover, cost very little for feeding, as they prefer pebbles. They can, therefore, be profitably cultivated on the sea beach. But I would remind intending farmers that ostriches are very nimble on their feet. It is also notorious that they have a shrewd way of kicking. A kick from an ostrich will break a cab-horse in two. The intending farmer, therefore, when he has compelled the foolish bird to bury its head in the sand and is plucking out its tail feathers, should stand well clear of the legs. This is a practical hint.
We dined at Evanston, neat-handed abigails, as usual, handing round dishes fearfully and wonderfully made out of old satchels and seasoned with varnish. There is a Chinese quarter here, with its curious congregation of celestial hovels all plastered over with, apparently, the labels of tea-chests. I should think the Chinese were all self-made men. At any rate they do not seem to me to have been made by any one who knew how to do it properly.
However, we had not much time to look at them, for cows on the track and one thing and another had made us rather late; so we were very soon off again, the travellers, after their hurried and indigestible meal, feeling very much like the jumping frog, after he couldn't jump, by reason of quail shot.
The snow had been gradually disappearing, and as we approached Echo canyon we found ourselves gliding into scenes that in summer are very beautiful indeed, with their turf and willow-fringed streams and abundant vegetation. And then, by gradual instalments of rock, each grander than the next, the great canyon came upon us. What a superb defile this is! It moves along like some majestic poem in a series of incomparable stanzas. There is nothing like it in the Himalayas that I know of, nor in the Suleiman range. In the Bolan Pass, on the Afghan frontier, there are intervals of equal sublimity; and even as a whole it may compare with it. But taken all for all—its length (some thirty miles), its astonishing diversity of contour, its beauty as well as its grandeur—I confess the Echo canyon is one of the masterpieces of Nature. I can speak of course only of what I have seen. I do not doubt that the Grand canyon in Arizona, which is said to throw all the wonders of Colorado and the marvels of Yellowstone or Yosemite into the shade, would dwarf the highway to Utah, but within my experience the Echo is almost incomparable. It would be very difficult to convey any idea of this glorious confusion of crags. But imagine some vast city of Cyclopean architecture built on the crest and face of gigantic cliffs of ruddy stone. Imagine, then, that ages of rain had washed away all the minor buildings, leaving only the battlements of the city, the steeples of its churches, its causeways and buttresses, and the stacks of its tallest chimneys still standing where they had been built. If you can imagine this, you can imagine anything, even Echo canyon—but I must confess that my attempt at description does not recall the scene to me in the least.
However, I passed through it and, up on the crest of a very awkward cliff for troops to scale under fire, had pointed out to me the stone-works which the Mormons built when they went out in 1857 to stop the advance of the Federal army.
And there is no doubt of it that the passage of that defile, even with such rough defences as the Saints had thrown up, would have cost the army very dear. For these stone-works, like the Afghans' sunghums, and intended, of course for cover against small arms only, were carried along the crest of the cliffs for some miles, and each group was connected with the next by a covered way, while in the bed of the stream below, ditches had been dug (some six feet deep and twenty wide), right across from cliff to cliff, and a dam constructed just beyond the first ditch which in an hour or two would have converted the whole canyon for a mile or so into a level sheet of water. On this dam the Mormon guns were masked, and though, of course, the Federal artillery would soon have knocked them off into the water, a few rounds at such a range and raking the army—clubbed as it would probably have been at the ditches—must have proved terribly effective. This position, moreover, though it could be easily turned by a force diverging to the right before it entered the canyon, could hardly be turned by one that had already entered it. And to attempt to storm those heights, with men of the calibre of the Transvaal Dutchmen holding them, would have been splendid heroism—or worse.
And then Weber canyon, with its repetitions of castellated cliffs, and its mimicry of buttress and barbican, bastion and demilune, tower and turret, and moat and keep, and all the other feudal appurtenances of the fortalice that were so dear to the author of "Kenilworth," with pine-trees climbing up the slopes all aslant, and undergrowth that in summer is full of charms. The stream has become a river, and fine meadows and corn-land lie all along its bank; large herds of cattle and companies of horses graze on the hill slopes, and wild life is abundant. Birds are flying about the valley under the supervision of buzzards that float in the air, half-mountain high, and among the willowed nooks parties of moor-hens enjoy life. And so into Ogden.
Night was closing in fast, and soon the country was in darkness. Between Ogden and the City of the Saints lay a two hours' gap of dulness, and then on a sudden I saw out in front of me a thin white line lying under the hills that shut in the valley.