We emerged from this most magnificent of nature's marvels to stop at Echo City. The echo was a reality, the city was not. There was the usual gathering of mud hovels, wooden shanties, large signboards, bars, saloons-called city saloons-which information I feel bound to repeat de temps en temps, lest European readers should suppose the United States to be a land of a "thousand cities," whereas London alone would go far towards covering them all. At this point the rail follows the course of the river Weber, which rises on the Watsatch mountains and falls into the great Salt Lake. It seemed to conduct us to the Weber Cañon, leading the way, now leaping over monstrous rocks, now gliding smoothly at their base, and leaving the rail just room enough to pass on, but not an inch to spare.

The Weber Cañon is still more startling and mystic than the Echo, but it would be difficult to say which is the more beautiful of them. There is at this spot a peculiar formation called the "Devil's Slide," being two ridges of granite rock projecting about fifty feet, and running parallel with each other, the surface being as smooth as glass or as a slide, whence it takes its name. The wonderful serrated rocks were

the principal feature of Weber Cañon, together with the mad freaks of the river, which plunged,

and roared, and darted from one side to the other as if frantic to get out. The scenery was so terrifically grand that even our most stolid passengers became excited, rushing from side to side of the carriages. One man, whose voice we had never heard, burst out, "Wall, this beats me, for ups and downs, and ins and outs. I never did see!" The rocky walls on either side seemed converging together, as though it were impassable, the river continuing its furious efforts to get free, until we arrived very shortly at the Devil's Gate.

From this curious christening it would appear that the Devil is no mean architect, and has a taste for the picturesque as well as the terrible. Vast black rocks in vindictive-looking form towered above a sort of boiling cauldron, the river rushing in from all directions, foaming, roaring, lashing itself into fleecy froth, then sinking into inky chasms, battling against the dark rocks which hemmed it in sternly, as if saying, "Beat thy brains out, but no farther shalt thou go." Never have I seen a river in such a fury. Over this dark chasm, through this Devil's Gate, we had to struggle upon a We held our very meagre wooden bridge. breath with something like awe; a more terrific spot to end our days could scarcely be conceived, to say nothing of its suspicious appel

VOL. II.

3

lation. But having got fairly over the bridge, the Cañon opened out, and we were soon in Utah Territory, when our thoughts and emotions merged into curiosity as to what moral wonders we were to witness in the land of the Mormon.

CHAPTER III.

MORMONISM.

HE most startling dropping off from my eyes of the cherished scales of

prejudice occurred during my visit to the state of Utah! I say prejudice, because, before I went to Utah, I did not know that I was prejudiced; though I thought I knew all about Mormons, and it had inspired me with a holy horror. I had lived in Wales, the huntingground of the Mormons, and whence they had carried off our best housemaids and cooks, and the prettiest girls of the village. Consequently, the Mormons were regarded there much in the same light as men-eating tigers, and were rigorously persecuted, as well as "prosecuted according to law." It was not poor Joe Smith, who was a mere maniac, that had received some tablets of a new law of his fancy, but the institution of polygamy about which we were all furious.

The idea of a man having as many wives as he could support, or rather as he could make useful.

I had lived also in Oriental countries where plurality of wives was the law of the land, but had never thought a man a monster because he had two or three sultanas, a score of "yearling wives," and numberless others of different grades. But that was in the East, and they were Mahomedans. Living in the West, and being Christians, would seem, then, to have made the crime. How could the United States allow such infamy to exist in the heart of the country? Why not make felons of the Mormons, and send them into penal servitude as we do at home? An American replied, "So we would, but it is such a tarnation long journey to get at them; there are so many of them, too, and then I don't think we have any law to stop a man from living under the same roof with as. many ladies as he likes. If they choose to consider themselves his wives, why that is their own look out; they are not in bondage, they are slaves only so long as they like to be. Oh! you'll see when this rail gets through them they'll skedaddle fast enough then. Ladies are as fond of change, you know, as the men."

"And do you think this will do away with polygamy?" I asked.