About forty miles from Salt Lake City we begin to find Nature's barrenness succumbing to the truly marvellous industry of the Mormon people. To understand the exquisite beauty of simple green grass, you must travel through eight hundred miles of safe-brush and grama, -- the former, the homely gray-leaved plant of our Eastern goose-stuffing, grown into a dwarf tree six feet high . . . By incredible labor, bringing down rivulets from the snow-peaks of the Wahsatch range and distributing them over the levels by every ingenious device known to artificial irrigation, the Mormon farmers have converted the bottoms of the canons through which we approached Salt Lake into fertile fields and pasture-lands, whose emerald sweep soothed our eyes wearied with so many leagues of monotony, as an old home-strain molifies the ear irritated by the protracted rhythmic clash or the dull, steady buzz of iron machinery. . . . The student of rewards and punishments might well believe that none but God's chosen people could cause this horrible desert, after such triumphant fashion, to blossom like the rose.
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