tream, whose entire
course has never yet been mapped by an intelligent explorer. Here the
road becomes entangled again among mountains, and winds its way over
steep ridges, across foaming torrents, and through canons so narrow that
only noonday sunshine penetrates their depths, until it emerges, through
a rocky gate in the great barrier of the Wahsatch range, upon the bench
above Salt Lake City, twelve hundred miles from Fort Leavenworth. The
view at this point, from the mouth of Emigration Canon, is enchanting.
The sun, sinking through a cloudless western sky, silvers the long line
of the lake, which is visible twenty miles away. Beyond the city the
River Jordan winds quietly through the plain. Below the gazer are roofs
and cupolas, shady streets, neat gardens, and fields of ripening grain.
The mountains, which bound the horizon on every side, except where a
wavering stream of heated air shows the beginning of the Great Desert,
are tinged with a soft purple haze, in anticipation of the sunset, but
every patch of green grass on their slopes glows through it like an
emerald, while along the summits runs an undulating thread of snow.

Throughout this vast line of road, the only white inhabitants are the
garrisons of the military posts, the keepers of mail-stations, and
_voyageurs_ and mountaineers, whose cabins may be found in every
locality favorable to Indian trade. These last are a singular race
of men, fast disappearing, like the Indian and the buffalo, their
neighbors. Most of them are of French extraction, and some have died
without having learned to speak a word of English. Their wealth consists
in cattle and horses, and little stocks of goods which they purchase
from the sutlers at the forts or the merchants at Salt Lake City. Some
of the more considerable among them have the means of sending to the
States for an annual supply of blankets, beads, vermilion, and other
stuff for Indian traffic; but the most are thriftless, and all are
living in concubinage or marriage with squaws, and surrounded by troops
of unwashed, screeching half-breeds. Once in from three to six years,
they will make a journey to St. Louis, and gamble away so much of their
savings since the last visit as has escaped being wasted over greasy
card-tables during the long winter-evenings among the mountains. The
Indian tribes along the way are numerous and formidable, the road
passing through country occupied by Pawnees, Cheyennes, Sioux,
Arapahoes