After twenty miles from the city we reached a ranch on rising ground, near the water-gate of the Jordan. It was built at an expense of $17,000, and was called the Utah Brewery. Despite, however, the plenty of hop and barley, the speculation proved a failure, and the house had become a kind of mail-station. Between it and the river were a number of little rush-girt “eyes”—round pools, some hot, others cold—and said to be unfathomable; that is to say, from twenty to thirty fathoms deep. They related that a dragoon, slipping with his charger into one of them, found a watery grave, where a drier death might have been expected. At the ranch we rested for an hour, but called in vain for food. From the Utah Brewery, which is about half way, drivers reckon twenty-two miles to Camp Floyd, making a total of forty-two to forty-three miles between the head-quarters of the saint and the sinner, and we therefore looked forward to a “banian day.”
About noon we hitched to and proceeded to ascend Traverse Mountain, a ridge-like spur of the Wasach, running east and west. It separates the Valley of the Northern or Great Salt Lake from the basin of the Utah, or Sweetwater Lake, to the southward, and is broken through by the waters of Jordan. The young river—called Piya Ogwap, or the Big Water, by the Shoshonees—here rushes in a foaming shallow stream, that can barely float a dug-out, over a rocky, pebbly bed, in the sole of a deep but short kanyon, which winds its way through the cross range. The descent is about 100 feet in two miles, after which the course serpentines, the banks fall, and the current becomes gentle.
As we toiled up the Dug-way, the graded incline that runs along the shoulder of the mountain, we saw a fine back view of the Happy Valley through an atmosphere clear as that of the English littoral before rain. Advancing higher, we met, face to face, an ambulance full of uniform en route to the Holy City, drawn by four neat mules, and accompanied by strikers—military servants. We drew up, the judge was readily recognized, and I was introduced to Captains Heth, Clarke, and Gibson, and to Lieutenant Robinson. They began with an act of charity, supplying ham sandwiches to half-starved men, and I afterward spent pleasant evenings with them at Great Salt Lake City, and became Captain Heth’s guest at Camp Floyd. Their kindness and hospitality lasted to the end of my stay. After the usual “liquoring up,” they pointed to Ash Hollow, the depths below, where the Mormons had intended to make a new Thermopylæ. Promising to meet them again, we then shook hands and resumed our road.
The steep descent on the counterslope of Traverse Mountain disclosed to us the first sight of Utah Lake, which is to its sister what Carmel is to Lebanon. It was a soft and sunny, a placid and beautiful landscape, highly refreshing after the arid lands on the other side. A panorama of lake, plain, and river lay before us. On the east, south, and west were rugged walls and peaks of mountain and hill; and northward a broad grassy slope rose to the divide between the valleys of the Fresh and of the Salt Lake. From afar the binding of plain round the basin appeared so narrow that the mountains seemed to dip their feet into the quiet reservoir; and beyond the southern point the lone peak of lofty Nebo stood, to adopt the Koranic comparison, like one of the pins which fasten down the plains of earth. A nearer approach discovers a broad belt of meadow, rich alluvial soil, in parts marshy, and in others arable, wheat and root-crop flourishing in the bottom, and bunch-grass upon the acclivities. The breadth is greater to the west and south of the lake than in other parts. It is cut by many a poplar-fringed stream that issues from the tremendous gorges around—the American Fork, the Timpanogos[185] or Provo River, and the Spanish Fork. On the near side, beyond the winding Jordan, lay little Lehi, whose houses were half hid by black trees; and eastward of the Utah Water, dimly visible, was Provo City, on a plain watered by four creeks. Such were the environs of the Sea of Tiberias.
[185] From Timpa, a rock, and ogwabe, contracted to oge, a river, in the Yuta dialect. In English maps published as late as seven years ago, “Timpanogos” is applied to the Great Salt Lake! Provo or Provaux is the name of a Canadian trapper and trader, who in past times defeated with eighty men a thousand Indians, and was killed at the moment of victory. The Mormons call the City Provo, and Gentiles prefer as a “rile” Timpanogos.
The Utah Lake,UTAH LAKE. another Judean analogue, derives its supplies from the western versant of the Wasach. It is in shape an irregular triangle, the southern arm forming a very acute angle. The extreme length is thirty miles, and the greatest breadth is fifteen. It owes its sweetness, which, however, is by no means remarkable, to its northern drainage, the Piya Ogwap, alias Utah Outlet, alias Jordan River. Near the shores the water soon deepens to fifteen feet; the bottom is said to be smooth, uniform, and very profound in places; but probably it has never been sounded. The bed, where it shows, is pebbly; a white, chalky incrustation covers the shallower bottom; shells, especially the fresh-water clam, are numerous upon the watery margin; the flaggy “Deserét weed” in the tulares is ten feet high,[186] and thicket is dense in places where rock does not occupy the soil. The western side is arid for want of influents; there is a “lone tree,” a solitary cotton-wood, conspicuous amid the grazing-ground of bunch-grass, sage, and greasewood, and the only inhabitants, excepting a single ranch—Evan’s—are, apparently, the Phrynosoma and the lizard, the raven and the jackass-rabbit. The Utah Lake freezes in December, January, and February. At these months the Jordan rolls down floes of ice, but it is seldom to be traversed on foot. In the flood season it rises two, and the wind tide extends to about three feet. It is still full of fish, which in former times were carried off in barrels. The white trout weigh thirty pounds. There are many kinds of mountain trout averaging three pounds, while salmon trout, suckers, and mudfish are uncommonly large and plentiful; water-snakes and “horsehair fish” are also found.
[186] Tulare is a marsh of bulrush (Scirpus lacustris), which is found extending over immense tracts of river valley in Western America. “Tooly” water, as it is pronounced, is that which is flavored or tainted by it.
After descending the steep incline we forded the Jordan, at that point 100 feet broad, and deep to the wagon-hubs. The current was not too swift to prevent the growth of weeds. The water was of sulphury color, the effect of chalk, and the taste was brackish, but not unpleasant; cattle are said to like it. The fording was followed by a long ascent, the divide between Utah Valley and its western neighbor Cedar Valley. About half way between the Brewery and the Camp is a station, held by a Shropshire Mormon, whose only name, as far as I could discover, was Joe Dug-out, so called, like the Watertons de Waterton, from the style of his habitation. He had married a young woman, who deterred him from giving her a sister—every Oriental language has a word to express what in English, which lacks the thing, is rudely translated “a rival wife”—by threatening to have his ears cut off by the “horfficers.” Joe, however, seemed quite resigned to the pains and penalties of monogamy, and, what was more to our purpose, had a good brew of porter and Lager-bier.
Having passed on the way a road that branches off to the old camp, which was deserted for want of water, we sighted from afar the new cantonment. It lies in a circular basin, surrounded by irregular hills of various height, still wooded with black cedar, where not easily felled, and clustering upon the banks of Cedar Creek, a rivulet which presently sinks in a black puddly mud. For a more thoroughly detestable spot one must repair to Gharra, or some similar purgatorial place in Lower Sindh. The winter is long and rigorous, the summer hot and uncomfortable, the alkaline water curdles soap, and the dust-storms remind one of the Punjaub. I lost no time in suggesting to my compagnon de voyage, Lieutenant Dana, as a return for his kindness in supplying me with a “Bayonet Exercise,” and other papers, our old campaigning habit of hanging wet canvas before every adit, and received the well-merited thanks of Madam. The hardest part of these hardships is that they are wholly purposeless. Every adobe brick in the place has been estimated to have cost a cent, as at Aden each cut stone was counted a rupee; and the purchase of lumber has enriched the enemy. In 1858 the Peace Commissioners sent by the supreme government conceded to the Mormons a point which saved the Saints. The army was not to be “located” within forty miles of Great Salt Lake City; thus the pretty sites about Utah Lake were banned to them, and the Mormons, it is said, “jockeyed” them out of the rich and fertile Cache Valley, eighty miles north of the head-quarters.
A broken wall surrounds this horrid hole. Julia and Sally carried us in with unflagging vigor. We passed through Fairfield, less euphoniously termed Frogtown, the bazar of the cantonment on the other side of the creek. During the days whenCAMP FLOYD. Camp Floyd contained its full complement of camp followers—5000 souls—now reduced to 100 or 200 men, it must have been a delectable spot, teeming with gamblers and blacklegs, grog-house-keepers and prostitutes: the revolver and the bowie-knife had nightly work to do there, and the moral Saints were fond of likening Frogtown to certain Cities of the Plains. Of late years it has become more respectable, and now it contains some good stores.