At the dawn of the next day we prepared to set out; from the city to the mouth of the kanyon the distance is about thirteen, and to the lakelets twenty-seven miles. Mr. Little now accompanied us on horseback, and his son James, whom I may here safely call a boy, was driving a buck-board. This article is a light gig-body mounted upon a thin planking, to which luggage is strapped; it can go where a horse can tread, and is easier to both animals than riding down steep hills. The boy, like Mormon juveniles generally, had a great aptitude at driving, riding, and using the axe; he attended a school, but infinitely preferred that of Nature, and showed all the disposition to become the father of a stout, brave Western man. As in the wilder parts of Australia, where the pedagogue has less pay than the shepherd, “keep a school” is here equivalent to semi-starvation; there is no superstitious aversion, as the Gentiles have asserted, to a modicum of education, but the state of life renders manual labor more honored and profitable. While the schoolmaster gains $2 50 per mensem, a ditcher would make the same sum per diem. Besides impatience of study, the boys are ever anxious to become men—“bring up a child and away it goes,” says the local proverb—and literature will not yet enable a youth to marry and to set up housekeeping in the Rocky Mountains.
Our route lay over the bench; on our right was a square adobe fort, that had been used during the Indian troubles, and fields and houses were scattered about. Passing the mouth of Parley’s Kanyon, we entered the rich bottom-land of the Great Cotton-wood, beautified with groves of quaking asp, whose foliage was absolute green, set off by paper-white stems. After passing through an avenue of hardheads, i.e., erratic granite boulders, which are carted to the city for building the Temple, we turned to the left and entered the mouth of the kanyon, where its sides flare out into gentler slopes.
A clear mountain stream breaks down the middle. The bed is a mass of pebbles and blocks: hornblende; a white limestone, almost marble, but full of flaws; red sandstone, greenstone, and a conglomerate like mosaic-work. The bank is thick with the poplar, from which it derives its name; willow clumps; the alder, with its dry, mulberry-like fruit; the hop vine, and a birch whose bark is red as the cherry-tree’s. Above the stream the ravine sides are in places too steep for growth; as a rule, the northern is never wooded save where the narrowness of the gorge impedes the action of the violent south winds. On the lower banks the timber is mostly cleared off. Upon the higher slopes grow the mountain mahogany and the scrub maple wherever there is a foot of soil. There is a fine, sturdy growth of abies. The spruce, or white pine, rises in a beautifully regular cone often 100 feet high; there are two principal varieties of fir, one with smooth light bark, and the other, which loves a higher range, and looks black as it bristles out of its snowy bed, is of a dun russet. Already appeared the splendid tints which make the American autumn a fit subject “pictoribus atque poetis.” An atmosphere of blue seemed to invest the pines; the maple blushed bright red; and the willow clumps of the bed and the tapestry of ferns had turned to vegetable gold, while snow, bleached to more than usual whiteness by intervals of deep black soil, flecked the various shade of the poison hemlocks and balsam firs, and the wild strawberry, which the birds had stripped of fruit.
GREAT COTTON-WOOD KANYON.Great Cotton-wood Kanyon, like the generality of these ravines in the western wall of the Wasach, runs east and west till near the head, when it gently curves toward the north, and is separated from its neighbor by a narrow divide. On both sides the continuity of the gap is cut by deep jagged gullies, rendering it impossible to crown the heights. The road, which winds from side to side, was worked by thirty-two men, directed by Mr. Little, in one season, at a total expense of $16,000. After exhausting Red Buttes, Emigration, and other kanyons, for timber and fuel, Great Cotton-wood was explored in 1854, and in 1856 the ascent was made practicable. In places where the gorge narrows to a gut there were great difficulties, but rocks were removed, while tree-trunks and boughs were spread like a corduroy, and covered over with earth brought from a distance: Mormon energy overcame every obstacle. It is repaired every summer before the anniversary festival; it suffers during the autumn, and is preserved from destruction by the winter snows. In many places there are wooden bridges, one of which pays toll, and at the end of the season they become not a little rickety. As may be imagined, the water-power has been utilized. Lines and courses carefully leveled, and in parts deeply excavated, lest the precious fluid should spread out in basins, are brought from afar, and provided with water-gates and coffer-dams. The mills are named after the letters C, B, A, D, and lastly E. Already 700,000 square feet of lumber have been cut during this summer, and a total of a million is expected before the mills are snowed up; you come upon these ugly useful erections suddenly, round a sharp turn in the bed; they have a queer effect with their whirring saws and crash of timber, forming a treble to the musical bass of the water-gods.
We halted at the several mills, when Mr. Little overlooked his accounts, and distributed stores of coffee, sugar, and tobacco. After the first five miles we passed flecks of snow; the thermometer, however, in the shade never showed less than 60° F. In places the hill sides were bald from the effect of avalanches, and we saw where a house had lately been swept away. In others a fine white limestone glistened its deception. After passing Mill D, we debouched upon the basin also called the Big Prairie, a dwarf turfy savanna, about 100 yards in diameter, rock and tree girt, and separated from Parley’s Kanyon on the north by a tall, narrow wall. We then ascended a slope of black, viscid, slippery mud, in which our animals were nearly mired, with deep slush-holes and cross-roots: as we progressed the bridges did not improve. On our left, in a pretty grove of thin pines, stood a bear-trap. It was a dwarf hut, with one or two doors, which fall when Cuffy tugs the bait from the figure of 4 in the centre. These mountaineers apparently ignore the simple plan of the Tchuvash, who fill up with corn-brandy a hollow in some tree lying across “old Ephraim’s” path, and catch him dead drunk. In many places the quaking-asp trunks were deeply indented with claw-scars, showing that the climbing species is here common. Shortly before, a bear had been shot within a few miles of Great Salt Lake City, and its paws appeared upon the hotel table d’hôte.
About mid afternoon we dismounted, and left our nags and traps at Mill E, the highest point, where we were to pass the night. Mr. Little was suffering from a severe neuralgia, yet he insisted upon accompanying us. With visions of Albano, Killarney, and Windermere, I walked up the half mile of hill separating us from Great Cotton-wood Lake. In front rose tall pine-clad and snow-strewed peaks, a cul de sac formed by the summit of the Wasach. We could not see their feet, but instinct told me that they dropped around the water. The creek narrowed to a jump. Presently we arrived at a kind of punch-bowl, formed by an amphitheatre of frowning broken mountains, highest and most snowy on the southeast and west, and nearly clear of snow and trees on the east. The level ground, perhaps one mile in diameter, was a green sward, dotted with blocks and boulders, based on black humus and granite detritus. Part of it was clear, the rest was ivy-grown, with pines, clumps, and circlets of tall trees, surrounded by their young in bunches and fringes, as if planted by the hand of man. There were signs of the last season’s revelry—heaps of charcoal and charred trunks, rough tables of two planks supported by trestles, chairs or rail-like settles, and the brushy remnants of three “boweries.” Two skulls showed that wolves had been busy with the cattle. Freshly-caught trout lay upon the table, preserved in snow, and in the distance the woodman’s axe awoke with artful sound the echoes of the rocks.
At last we came upon the little tarn which occupies the lowest angle, the western ridge of the punch-bowl or prairie basin. Unknown to Captain Stansbury, it had been visited of old by a few mountain-men, and since 1854 by the mass of the Mormons. According to my informants it is the largest of a chaplet of twelve pools, two to the S.W. and ten to the S.E., which are probably independent bulges in the several torrent beds. Some are described as having no outlet, yet all are declared to be sweet water. The altitude has not been ascertained scientifically. It is roughly set down between 9500 and 10,000 feet. It was then at its smallest—about half a mile long by one quarter broad. After the melting of the snow it spreads out over the little savanna. The bottom is sandy and gravelly, sloping from ten to twenty feet deep. It freezes over in winter, and about 25-30 May the ice breaks up and sinks. The runnel which feeds it descends from the snow-capped peak to the south, and copious supplies trickle through the soppy margin at the base of the dripping hills around. The surplus escapes through a head to the north, where a gated dam is thrown across to raise the level, and to regulate the water-power. The color is a milky white; the water is warm, and its earthy vegetable taste, the effect of the weeds that margin it, contrasts with the purity of the creek which drains it. The fish are principally mountain trout and the gymnotus eel. In search of shells we walked round the margin, now sinking in the peaty ground, then clambering over the boulders—white stones that, rolled down from the perpendicular rocks above, simulated snow—then fighting our way through the thick willow clumps. Our quest, however, was not rewarded. After satisfying curiosity, we descended by a short cut of a quarter of a mile under tall trees whose shade preserved the snow, and found ourselves once more in Mill E.
The log hut was of the usual make. A cold wind—the mercury had fallen to 50° F.—rattled through the crannies, and we prepared for a freezing night by a blazing fire. The furniture—two bunks, with buffalo robes, tables and chairs, which were bits of plank mounted on four legs—was of the rudest. I whiled away the last hours of light by adding to my various accomplishments an elementary knowledge of felling trees.FELLING TREES. Handling the timber-axe is by no means so simple a process as it appears. The woodman does it by instinct; the tyro, who is always warned that he may easily indent or slice off a bit of his leg, progresses slowly and painfully. The principal art is to give the proper angle to the blade, to whirl the implement loosely round the head, and to let it fall by the force of its own weight, the guiding hand gliding down the haft to the other, in order not to break the blow. We ate copiously; appetite appeared to come by eating, though not in the Parisian sense of the phrase—what a treasure would be such a sanitarium in India! The society was increased by two sawyers, gruff and rugged men, one of whom suffered from ophthalmia, and two boys, who successfully imitated their elders.
Our fireside chat was sufficiently interesting. Mr. S—— described the ceremonies of the last Mormon Independence Day.INDEPENDENCE DAY. After the preliminaries had been settled as below,[195] the caravans set out from the Holy City. In 1860 there were 1122 souls, 56 carriages, 163 wagons, 235 horses, 159 mules, and 168 oxen. They bivouacked for the night upon the road, and marched with a certain ceremony. The first President issued an order allowing any one to press forward, though not at the expense of others; still no one would precede him; nor would the second advance before the third President—a good example to some who might want teaching. Moreover, the bishops had the privilege of inviting, or, rather, of permitting the people of their several wards, even Gentiles, to attend. The “pioneers”—the survivors of the noble 143 who, guided by their Joshua, Mr. Brigham Young, first attempted the Promised Land—were distinguished by their names on banners, and the bands played lustily “God save the King,” and the “Star-spangled Banner,” “Happy Land,” and “Du-dah.” At six on the fine morning of the 24th, which followed ugly weather, a salute of three guns, in honor of the First Presidency, was fired, with music in the intervals, the stars and the stripes floating on the top of the noblest staff, a tall fir-tree. At 9 A.M. a salute of thirteen guns, denoting the age of New Zion, and at 6 P.M. twelve guns, corresponding with the number of the apostles, were discharged with similar ceremonies. The scene must have been lively and picturesque around the bright little tarn, and under the everlasting hills—a holiday crowd, with wagons and ambulances drawn up, tents and marquees pitched under the groves, and horse-races, in which the fair sex joined, over the soft green sward. At 10 P.M., after the dancing in the boweries had flagged, the bands finished with “Home, sweet Home,” and the Saints returned to their every-day occupations.
[195] Extract from the Great Salt Lake correspondent of that amiable and conscientious periodical, the “New York Herald.”