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.

But to return to the city. As soon as City Creek approaches its upper
limit its waters are drawn off right and left, and distributed in brisk
rills, one on each side of every street, the regular slopes of the delta
upon which the city is built being admirably adapted to this system of
street irrigation. These streams are all pure and sparkling in the
upper streets, but, as they are used to some extent as sewers, they soon
manifest the consequence of contact with civilization, though the speed
of their flow prevents their becoming offensive, and little Saints not
over particular may be seen drinking from them everywhere.

The streets are remarkably wide and the buildings low, making them
appear yet wider than they really are. Trees are planted