Near Glenwood is an interesting little lake that I visited. Its water is exquisitely clear and very slightly warm. Though less than a foot deep in most places (it has one pool twelve feet in depth), it never freezes, in spite of the intense cold at this altitude. It is stocked with trout that do not grow to any size, but which do not on the other hand seem to diminish in numbers, although the consumption is considerable. The botany in the neighbourhood of the lake is very interesting, the larkspur, lupin, mimulus, violet, heart's-ease, ox-eye, and several other familiar plants of English gardens, growing wild, while a strongly tropical flavour is given to the vegetation by the superb footstools of cactus—imagine sixty-one brilliant scarlet blossoms on a cushion only fifteen inches across!—by the presence of a gorgeous oriole (the body a pure yellow freaked with black on the wings, and the head and neck a rich orange), and by a large butterfly of a clear flame-colour with the upper wings sharply hooked at the tips. Flower, bird, and insect were all in keeping with the Brazils or the Malayan Archipelago.
On a rock, close by the grist-mill, is the only specimen of the much-talked-of Indian "hieroglyphics" that I have seen. They may of course be hieroglyphics, but to me they look like the first attempts of some untutored savage youth to delineate in straight lines the human form divine. Or they may be only his attempts to delineate a cockroach.
CHAPTER XIV.
FROM GLENWOOD TO MONROE.
From Glenwood to Salina—Deceptiveness of appearances—An apostate Mormon's friendly testimony—-Reminiscences of the Prophet Joseph Smith—Rabbit-hunting in a waggon—Lost in the sagebrush—A day at Monroe—Girls riding pillion—The Sunday drum—Waiting for the right man: "And what if he is married?"—The truth about apostasy: not always voluntary.
SOON after leaving Glenwood, cultivation dies out, and for twelve miles or so the rabbit-brush and grease-wood—the "atriplex" of disagreeably scientific travellers, who always speak of sage-brush as "artemisia," and disguise the gentle chipmunk as "spermophilus"—divide the land between them. The few flowers, and these all dwarfed varieties, attest the poverty of the soil. The mountains, however, do their best to redeem the landscape, and the scenery, as desolate scenery, is very fine. The ranges that have on either hand rolled along an unbroken series of monotonous contour, now break up into every conceivable variety of form, mimicking architecture or rather multiplying its types, and piling bluffs, pierced with caves, upon terraces, and pinnacles upon battlements. Causeways, like that in Echo Canyon, slant down their slopes, and other vestiges of a terrific aqueous action abound. Next to this riot of rock comes a long series of low hills, grey, red, and yellow, utterly destitute of vegetation, and so smooth that it looks as if the place were a mountain-yard, where Nature made her mountains, and had collected all her materials about her in separate convenient mounds before beginning to mix up and fuse. In places they were richly spangled with mica, giving an appearance of sparkling, trickling water to the barren slopes.
On the other side of the valley, the mountains, discountenancing such frivolities, had settled down into solid-bottomed masses of immense bulk, the largest mountains, in superficial acreage, I had seen all the journey, and densely cedared.
With Gunnison in sight across the valley, we reached Willow Creek, a pleasant diversion of water and foliage in the dreary landscape, and an eventful spot in the last Indian war, for among these willows here Black Hawk made a stand to dispute the Mormons' pursuit of their plundered stock, and held the creek, too, all the day. And so out on to the monotonous grease-wood levels again—an Indians' camp fire among the cedars, the only sign of a living thing—and over another "divide," and so into the Sevier Valley. The river is seen flowing along the central depression, with the Red-Mound settlement on the other side of the stream, and Salina on this side of it, lying on ahead.
Salina is one of those places it is very hard to catch. You see it first "about seven" miles off, and after travelling towards it for an hour and a half, find you have still "eight miles or so" to go. "Appearances are very deceptive in this country," as these people delight in saying to new-comers, and the following story is punctually told, at every opportunity, to illustrate it.
A couple of Britishers (of course "Britishers") started off from their hotel "to walk over to that mountain there," just to get an appetite for breakfast. About dinner-time one of them gave up and came back, leaving his obstinate friend to hunt the mountain by himself. After dining, however, he took a couple of horses and rode out after his friend, and towards evening came up with him just as he was taking off his shoes and stockings by the side of a two-foot ditch.