As it was Christmas time, the theatre was open almost every day, sometimes with a pantomime for the children, or a burlesque or domestic drama for the adults. The manager gave us carte-blanche to enter any part of the house at any time, and, by special request, I visited behind the scenes the green-room coulisses. My secretary hesitated a good deal about this enterprise. "I do not know any theatre where I should like to take my sister behind the scenes," he said. However, Miss Brigham Young accompanied me, also her father's secretary and my secretary. I witnessed there nothing that could shock the most fastidious person. There was no vice, no drinking, no intrigue; all was as straightforward as the arrangements of an household. "Pleasure within bounds does not necessarily entail vice," said Brigham Young upon one occasion.

The theatre was generally well-filled, but I was greatly amused with the primitive mode of payment. A basket of apples, a bundle of turnips, ears of Indian corn, bags of barley,

There was very little

dried peaches or plums. money circulating in Salt Lake, but there was a great deal of barter, though they did not refuse money, as in some Oriental countries, where I had to barter my skirts for mangoes and fowls. The droves of rosy-faced children in scarlet

hoods enjoyed themselves tremendously; so did the adults, at a large ball that was given. It was like an English country ball-plenty of fun, and a good supper, the young people behaving with the most perfect modesty and ease, simplicity and good humour taking the place of affectation and style.

Then there were skating parties, where they absolutely did skate, on the great Salt Lake, not in an over-heated, gas-lit room, with imitation ice, and on imitation skates-bonâ fide skating, and a very pretty sight and exhilarating performance it was.

On Sundays we had Brigham Young's fine discourse in the tabernacle, with some six or seven thousand persons as a congregation. Like Spurgeon, Brigham Young possesses one of those clear, soft, penetrating voices which, without effort, make themselves heard, even to the remotest corner of the building. As to the controversy of the bishop, the Yankees concluded they had gained the victory, whilst the Mormons considered that they had the best of it, while we remained in that peculiarly bewildered condition already described.

Whether this peculiar people are to continue to spread or to dwindle away after the death of their great leader, is a problem time only can solve, now that he has constructed a rail in

conjunction with the great Pacific. Salt Lake is on the high road between San Francisco and Chicago, neither of which cities is celebrated for the purity of its morals. of intercourse will result

Whether this facility in the Mormons turn

ing swindlers and cheats, but taking only one wife at a time, or in the San Franciscans and Chicagans becoming saints and polygamists, who shall say?

VOL. II.

4

CHAPTER IV.

THE SNOW MOUNTAINS.

E now entered upon the most picturesque part of our journey, the rail

passing through the great chain of the Sierra Nevada, the everlasting snow-capped mountains, which, in their gorgeous beauty, can be compared only with the Alps. I should say, however, that the Alps were more peaked and spiral, the Nevada more abruptly perpendicular, their terrific frontals as vertical walls of granite, rising sheer up for several thousand feet, being far more appalling than the graceful peaks of the Alps.

This magnificent scenery, lit up by a bright blue sky-even at night bright blue-by dazzling sun rays, or glowing stars the larger planets emulating young moons-was a treat to look upon, and effaced the remembrance of the trouble and toil we had gone through to arrive there.

The actual difficulties in the construction of the overland route to California began at the Sierra Nevada, for the line had frequently to be cut out of the almost perpendicular side of the mountain, and the Chinese, who were the labourers, were lowered in baskets over precipices varying from hundreds to thousands of feet. Here and there would occur a gap-a deep ravine or cleft-over which a suspension bridge was thrown. Engineers had indeed been much puzzled to trace out any possible route to carry a rail. The engineering over the Rocky Mountains had been child's play to this, for except the clearing away of the sage brush, there was little difficulty in it. Even through the Cañons the torrent formed an easy road, and all that portion of the country had been traversed by waggons for years; but through the Nevadas the first road had to be made suspended almost in mid air. The credit of planning and undertaking it is due to the Californians, and to the patient Chinese the labour of completing it,

Of sensationalism there was here enough and to spare. Some ladies shut their eyes and stopped their ears, as the train creaked slowly over these precarious-looking bridges, with hundreds of feet of yawning gulf beneath, or traversed the ledges so fearfully narrow, that if