direction, and everything destructible in them is being destroyed.

How far destruction may go it is not easy to guess. Every landscape,
low and high, seems doomed to be trampled and harried. Even the sky

is not safe from scath--blurred and blackened whole summers together
with the smoke of fires that devour the woods.

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 profoundshadowycanyons, 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, heartystream 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 thriftyorchard 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.

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 admirable 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 along the

sidewalks--elms, poplars, maples, and a few catalpas and hawthorns;
yet they are mostly small and irregular, and nowhere form avenues half

so leafy and imposing as one would be led to expect. Even in the
business streets there is but little regularity in the buildings--now

a row of plain adobe structures, half store, half dwelling, then a
high mercantile block of red brick or sandstone, and again a row of

adobe cottages nestled back among apple trees. There is one immense
store with its sign upon the roof, in letters big enough to be read

miles away, "Z.C.M.I." (Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution),
while many a small, codfishy corner grocery bears the legend "Holiness

to the Lord, Z.C.M.I." But little evidence will you find in this
Zion, with its fifteen thousand souls, of great wealth, though many a

Saint is seeking it as keenly as any Yankee Gentile. But on the other
had, searching throughout all the city, you will not find any trace of

squalor or extreme poverty.
Most of the women I have chanced to meet, especially those from the

country, have a weary, repressed look, as if for the sake of their
religion they were patiently carrying burdens heavier than they were

well able to bear. But, strange as it must seem to Gentiles, the many
wives of one man, instead of being repelled from one another by

jealousy, appear to be drawn all the closer together, as if the real
marriage existed between the wives only. Groups of half a dozen or so

may frequently be seen on the streets in close conversation, looking
as innocent and unspeculative as a lot of heifers, while the masculine

Saints pass them by as if they belonged to a distinctspecies. In the
Tabernacle last Sunday, one of the elders of the church, in

discoursing upon the good things of life, the possessions of Latter-Day
Saints, enumerated fruitful fields, horses, cows, wives, and

implements, the wives being placed as above, between the cows and
implements, without receiving any superior emphasis.

Polygamy, as far as I have observed, exerts a more degrading influence
upon husbands that upon wives. The love of the latter finds

expression in flowers and children, while the former seem to be
rendered incapable of pure love of anything. The spirit of Mormonism

is intenselyexclusive and un-American. A more withdrawn, compact,
sealed-up body of people could hardly be found on the face of the

earth than is gathered here, notwithstanding railroads, telegraphs,
and the penetrating lights that go sifting through society everywhere

in this revolutionary, question-asking century. Most of the Mormons I
have met seem to be in a state of perpetualapology, which can hardly

be fully accounted for by Gentile attacks. At any rate it is
unspeakable offensive to any free man.

"We Saints," they are continuallysaying, "are not as bad as we are
called. We don't murder those who differ with us, but rather treat

them with all charity. You may go through our town night or day and
no harm shall befall you. Go into our houses and you will be well

used. We are as glad as you are that Lee was punished," etc. While
taking a saunter the other evening we were overtaken by a