Be these things as they may, it is at any rate worth while for a modern Gentile to visit this center of the Mormon power, and gather from ocular evidence of its vital, living, forceful presence such lessons as he may.
This afternoon we took a little railway and journeyed twelve miles to Saltair, the Atlantic City or Virginia Beach of this metropolis, and there we bathed in the supersaturated brine. I could swim on it, not in it, so buoyant was the water, and my chief difficulty was to keep my head out and my feet in. The lake is sixty miles wide by ninety miles long, with several islands of high, barren hills. A few boats ply on it. No fish can live in it, and the chief use of it is to evaporate its waters for supply of salt. After dipping in it we came out quite encrusted with a white film of intense salt.
To-night we go on to Denver, through the cañon of the Grand River.
SEVENTEENTH LETTER.
A BRONCHO-BUSTING MATCH.
Glenwood Springs, October 16, 1903.
We left Salt Lake City by the express last night over the Denver & Rio Grande Railway, starting three hours late. When we awoke, we were coming up the canyon of the Green River, one of the head streams of the Colorado, and had passed through the barren volcanic lava wastes of the Colorado Desert during the night. The Green River flows between sheer, naked volcanic rock masses, not very high, but jagged, no green thing growing upon them. But the scanty bottom lands were often green with alfalfa meadows and well-kept peach and apple orchards, the result of irrigation.
From the valley of the Green River we crossed, passing through many deep cuts and tunnels, to the Grand River, the eastern fork of the Colorado, and followed up this stream all day. Very much the same sort of country as before. The bare, ragged, verdureless cliffs and rock masses, dry and plantless, only the red and yellow coloring of sandstone relieving the monotony, and everywhere upon the scant bottom lands the greenness and agriculture of irrigation. The aspen and maples, all a bright yellow, but not so splendid a golden hue as the forests of the valley of the Yukon.
Just before coming to Glenwood Springs, about noon, I had wandered beyond my sleeper into the smoking-car, thinking to have a view of the sort of men who got in and out at the way stations, and, seating myself in a vacant place, picked up a conversation with my neighbor. Imagine my surprise when I found him to be a fellow West Virginian, from Clarksburg, taking a little summer trip in the West, himself a Mr. Bassel, nephew of the well-known lawyer, John Bassel, of upper State fame. He was going to stop off at Glenwood Springs to see one of Colorado’s most popular sports, a “broncho-busting” match, where were to be gathered some of the most eminent masters of the art in the State. I consulted my time-tables, ascertained that we might spend the afternoon there and yet reach Denver the next morning, and when the train pulled into the station, we were among the expectant throng who there detrained.