"Just a mile or so, more," interposed John Stevens. "We are almost there; can't you exercise patience for another hour?"
At that moment, however, word was passed down the line that all would pause half an hour to rest animals and men.
The cavalcade had passed the two lower sawmills, with the roomy cabins decorated with waving flags. Now they halted beside the third and last mill, nestled in the crevice of the canyon. Its buzzing industry was stilled for this wondrous day, while the workmen and their families gathered in the grassy space to meet and welcome the company. For their pleasure they had not only made the last five miles of that difficult road into the vale of the Silver Lake, just above, but had also erected three spacious boweries with comfortable floors and seats to accommodate the gay revelers.
Everybody seemed moved with a common impulse for "doughnuts;" for the President himself, as he halted at the "saw-mill," stepped up to Aunt Clara Tyler and accepted courteously her offer of fried cakes.
The impatient girls were glad, nevertheless, when the half-hour was over, and they could once more resume their places in the wagon for the final steep climb to the place of destination. When they mounted the last summit of that low northern rim encircling the valley of their desire, both girlish throats were at once filled with excited exclamations of delight, as the fairy scene burst upon their view.
An emerald-tinted valley with a silvery lake empearled on its western rim lay before them, cupped in a circle of embracing hills and snow-covered crags. The summits of the eastern and western hills were crowned with pine, which here and there, like dusky sentinels, traced their lines down, down to the water's edge. That gleaming, brilliant, silent water! Every tree upon its brink was reproduced, and even the clouds above floated again in soft, tremulous pictures beneath the surface of this beautiful mountain mirror. Sheer above the lake on the south towered white granite cliffs, holding here and there a whiter bloom of snow in their pale embrace.
Ellen jumped excitedly from her seat to lean over and hug her friend Diantha, as the wagon rolled slowly down the smooth road to the spot which John had selected for the Winthrop and Tyler tents, close to the marquee of President Young. Dian put up a caressing hand to the soft cheek of her enthusiastic friend, Ellen, and leaned her own cheek tenderly against the one bending over her shoulder.
"Oh, Dian," breathed the happy girl, "I never thought there was so much beauty in all Utah."
"Utah is the home of beauty and goodness," said Charlie Rose gallantly, and even Dian could not answer this trite compliment saucily, for her heart was melted with rapture at sight of so much grandeur.
The camp was located on a fairy-like spot, overlooking the surrounding meadows and lake. The boweries, President Young's marquee, and President Heber C. Kimball's tent, occupied an open space amid the small copses of pine on the north side of the lake. The tents, carriages and wagons, were soon grouped about these central points. A massive granite rock, fifty-four feet in circumference by fifty-four feet high, stood at the entrance of this lovely, natural bower; from the center of this spot, and apparently without earth to sustain them, grew three pine trees, which were fringed round at the top of the rock with a thick cluster of young pines, about two feet high. A large flag was suspended from these trees, bearing the motto "Clear the Way," with an all seeing eye in the oval of the upper margin, above two clasped hands, under which, inscribed on a scroll, were the words, "Blessings Follow Sacrifices." A representation of the Pioneer company crossing the North Platte River, on rafts, occupied the central space of this great flag. Below was another legend, "The Pioneers of 1847 at the Upper Crossing of the Platte, in Pursuit of the Valleys of the Mountains."