It was the loneliest land for a grave! A land given over to the cayote and the raven--which is but another name for desolation and utter solitude.On damp, murky nights, these scattered skeletons gave forth a soft, hideous glow, like very faint spots of moonlight starring the vague desert.It was because of the phosphorus in the bones.But no scientific explanation could keep a body from shivering when he drifted by one of those ghostly lights and knew that a skull held it.
At midnight it began to rain, and I never saw anything like it--indeed, Idid not even see this, for it was too dark.We fastened down the curtains and even caulked them with clothing, but the rain streamed in in twenty places, nothwithstanding.There was no escape.If one moved his feet out of a stream, he brought his body under one; and if he moved his body he caught one somewhere else.If he struggled out of the drenched blankets and sat up, he was bound to get one down the back of his neck.
Meantime the stage was wandering about a plain with gaping gullies in it, for the driver could not see an inch before his face nor keep the road, and the storm pelted so pitilessly that there was no keeping the horses still.With the first abatement the conductor turned out with lanterns to look for the road, and the first dash he made was into a chasm about fourteen feet deep, his lantern following like a meteor.As soon as he touched bottom he sang out frantically:
"Don't come here!"
To which the driver, who was looking over the precipice where he had disappeared, replied, with an injured air: "Think I'm a dam fool?"The conductor was more than an hour finding the road--a matter which showed us how far we had wandered and what chances we had been taking.
He traced our wheel-tracks to the imminent verge of danger, in two places.I have always been glad that we were not killed that night.
I do not know any particular reason, but I have always been glad.
In the morning, the tenth day out, we crossed Green River, a fine, large, limpid stream--stuck in it with the water just up to the top of our mail-bed, and waited till extra teams were put on to haul us up the steep bank.But it was nice cool water, and besides it could not find any fresh place on us to wet.
At the Green River station we had breakfast--hot biscuits, fresh antelope steaks, and coffee--the only decent meal we tasted between the United States and Great Salt Lake City, and the only one we were ever really thankful for.
Think of the monotonous execrableness of the thirty that went before it, to leave this one simple breakfast looming up in my memory like a shot-tower after all these years have gone by!
At five P.M.we reached Fort Bridger, one hundred and seventeen miles from the South Pass, and one thousand and twenty-five miles from St.
Joseph.Fifty-two miles further on, near the head of Echo Canyon, we met sixty United States soldiers from Camp Floyd.The day before, they had fired upon three hundred or four hundred Indians, whom they supposed gathered together for no good purpose.In the fight that had ensued, four Indians were captured, and the main body chased four miles, but nobody killed.This looked like business.We had a notion to get out and join the sixty soldiers, but upon reflecting that there were four hundred of the Indians, we concluded to go on and join the Indians.
Echo Canyon is twenty miles long.It was like a long, smooth, narrow street, with a gradual descending grade, and shut in by enormous perpendicular walls of coarse conglomerate, four hundred feet high in many places, and turreted like mediaeval castles.This was the most faultless piece of road in the mountains, and the driver said he would "let his team out." He did, and if the Pacific express trains whiz through there now any faster than we did then in the stage-coach, I envy the passengers the exhilaration of it.We fairly seemed to pick up our wheels and fly--and the mail matter was lifted up free from everything and held in solution! I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a thing I mean it.
However, time presses.At four in the afternoon we arrived on the summit of Big Mountain, fifteen miles from Salt Lake City, when all the world was glorified with the setting sun, and the most stupendous panorama of mountain peaks yet encountered burst on our sight.We looked out upon this sublime spectacle from under the arch of a brilliant rainbow! Even the overland stage-driver stopped his horses and gazed!
Half an hour or an hour later, we changed horses, and took supper with a Mormon "Destroying Angel.""Destroying Angels," as I understand it, are Latter-Day Saints who are set apart by the Church to conduct permanent disappearances of obnoxious citizens.I had heard a deal about these Mormon Destroying Angels and the dark and bloody deeds they had done, and when I entered this one's house I had my shudder all ready.But alas for all our romances, he was nothing but a loud, profane, offensive, old blackguard! He was murderous enough, possibly, to fill the bill of a Destroyer, but would you have any kind of an Angel devoid of dignity? Could you abide an Angel in an unclean shirt and no suspenders? Could you respect an Angel with a horse-laugh and a swagger like a buccaneer?
There were other blackguards present--comrades of this one.And there was one person that looked like a gentleman--Heber C.Kimball's son, tall and well made, and thirty years old, perhaps.A lot of slatternly women flitted hither and thither in a hurry, with coffee-pots, plates of bread, and other appurtenances to supper, and these were said to be the wives of the Angel--or some of them, at least.And of course they were; for if they had been hired "help" they would not have let an angel from above storm and swear at them as he did, let alone one from the place this one hailed from.
This was our first experience of the western "peculiar institution," and it was not very prepossessing.We did not tarry long to observe it, but hurried on to the home of the Latter-Day Saints, the stronghold of the prophets, the capital of the only absolute monarch in America--Great Salt Lake City.As the night closed in we took sanctuary in the Salt Lake House and unpacked our baggage.