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Page 29
The Shasta region is still a fresh unspoiled wilderness, accessible
and available for travelers of every kind and degree. Would it not
then be a fine thing to set it apart like the Yellowstone and Yosemite
as a National Park for the welfare and benefit of all mankind,
preserving its fountains and forests and all its glad life in primeval
beauty? Very little of the region can ever be more valuable for any
other use--certainly not for gold nor for grain. No private right or
interest need suffer, and thousands yet unborn would come from far and
near and bless the country for its wise and benevolent forethought.
VI
The City of the Saints[8]
The mountains rise grandly round about this curious city, the Zion of
the new Saints, so grandly that the city itself is hardly visible.
The Wahsatch Range, snow-laden and adorned with glacier-sculpted
peaks, stretches continuously along the eastern horizon, forming the
boundary of the Great Salt Lake Basin; while across the valley of the
Jordan southwestward from here, you behold the Oquirrh Range, about as
snowy and lofty as the Wahsatch. To the northwest your eye skims the
blue levels of the great lake, out of the midst of which rise island
mountains, and beyond, at a distance of fifty miles, is seen the
picturesque wall of the lakeside mountains blending with the lake and
the sky.
The glacial developments of these superb ranges are sharply sculptured
peaks and crests, with ample wombs between them where the ancient
snows of the glacial period were collected and transformed into ice,
and ranks of profound shadowy canyons, while moraines commensurate
with the lofty fountains extend into the valleys, forming far the
grandest series of glacial monuments I have yet seen this side of the
Sierra.
In beginning this letter I meant to describe the city, but in the
company of these noble old mountains, it is not easy to bend one's
attention upon anything else. Salt Lake cannot be called a very
beautiful town, neither is there anything ugly or repulsive about it.
From the slopes of the Wahsatch foothills, or old lake benches, toward
Fort Douglas it is seen to occupy the sloping gravelly delta of City
Creek, a fine, hearty stream that comes pouring from the snows of the
mountains through a majestic glacial canyon; and it is just where this
stream comes forth into the light on the edge of the valley of the
Jordan that the Mormons have built their new Jerusalem.
At first sight there is nothing very marked in the external appearance
of the town excepting its leafiness. Most of the houses are veiled
with trees, as if set down in the midst of one grand orchard; and seen
at a little distance they appear like a field of glacier boulders
overgrown with aspens, such as one often meets in the upper valleys of
the California Sierra, for only the angular roofs are clearly visible.
Perhaps nineteen twentieths of the houses are built of bluish-gray
adobe bricks, and are only one or two stories high, forming fine
cottage homes which promise simple comfort within. They are set well
back from the street, leaving room for a flower garden, while almost
every one has a thrifty orchard at the sides and around the back. The
gardens are laid out with great simplicity, indicating love for
flowers by people comparatively poor, rather than deliberate efforts
of the rich for showy artistic effects. They are like the pet gardens
of children, about as artless and humble, and harmonize with the low
dwellings to which they belong. In almost every one you find daisies,
and mint, and lilac bushes, and rows of plain English tulips. Lilacs
and tulips are the most characteristic flowers, and nowhere have I
seen them in greater perfection. As Oakland is pre-eminently a city
of roses, so is this Mormon Saints' Rest a city of lilacs and tulips.
The flowers, at least, are saintly, and they are surely loved. Scarce
a home, however obscure, is without them, and the simple,
unostentatious manner in which they are planted and gathered in pots
and boxes about the windows shows how truly they are prized.
The surrounding commons, the marshy levels of the Jordan, and dry,
gravelly lake benches on the slopes of the Wahsatch foothills are now
gay with wild flowers, chief among which are a species of phlox, with
an abundance of rich pink corollas, growing among sagebrush in showy
tufts, and a beautiful papilionaceous plant, with silky leaves and
large clusters of purple flowers, banner, wings, and keel exquisitely
shaded, a mertensia, hydrophyllum, white boragewort, orthocarpus,
several species of violets, and a tall scarlet gilia. It is
delightful to see how eagerly all these are sought after by the
children, both boys and girls. Every day that I have gone botanizing
I have met groups of little Latter-Days with their precious bouquets,
and at such times it was hard to believe the dark, bloody passages of
Mormon history.
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