Ute Relations

To resume with Brigham for the last time. After a conversation about Indians, in which he denounced the military policy of the Government, averring that one bale of blankets and ten pounds of beads would go farther to protect the mails from stoppage and emigrants from massacre than a regiment of soldiers, he discovered that we crossed swords on every war-question, and tactfully changed the subject to the beauty of the Opera House.

Salt Lake

The lake from which the city takes its name is about twenty miles distant from the latter, by a good road acress the level valley-bottom. Artistically viewed, it is one of the loveliest sheets of water I ever saw, - bluer than the intensest blue of the ocean, and practically as impressive, since looking from the southern shore, you see only a water-horizon. This view, however, is broken by a magnificent mountainous island, rising, I should think, seven or eight hundred feet from the water, half a dozen miles from shore, and apparently as many miles in circuit. The density of the lake brine has been under- instead of over-stated. I swam out into it for a considerable distance, then lay upon my back on rather than in, the water, and suffered the breeze to waft me landward again. I was blown to a spot where the lake was only four inches deep, without grazing my back, and did not know I had got within my depth again until I depressed my hand and touched bottom!

Come Over Into My Garden

"Blessed be the day! Come over into my garden." We gladly accepted the invitation, and I must confess, if there ever could be any hope of conversion it was just about the time we stood in Brother Heber's fine orchard eating pears and apricots between exhortations, and having sound doctrine poked down our throats with gooseberries as big as plums. . .

An Embowered City

Salt Lake City, Brigham told me, he believed to contain sixteen thousand inhabitants. Its houses are built generally of adobe or wood, - a few of stone - and though none of them are architecturally ambitious, almost all have delightful gardens. Both fruit- and shade- trees are plenty and thrifty. Indeed, from the roof of the Opera House the city looks fairly embowered in green. It lies very picturesquely on a plain quite embasined among mountains, the beauty of its appearance is much heightened by the streams which run on both sides of all the broad streets, brought down from the snow-peaks for purposes of irrigation.

A Contra Dance with the President

I talked with Brigham till a party of young girls, whom he treated with a sage mixture of gallantry and fatherliness, came to him with an invitiation to join in some old-fashioned contra-dance long forgotten in the East. I was curious to see how he would acquit himself in this supreme ordeal of dignity; so I descended to the parquet, and was much impressed by the aristocratic grace with which he went through his figures.

Brigham's "Thousand Dollar" Chandelier

"Where do you think we got that central chandelier, and what d'ye suppose we paid for it?" It was a piece of workmanship which would have been creditable to any New York firm, -- apparently a richly carved circle, twined with gilt vines, leaves and tendrils, blossoming all over with flaming wax-lights, and suspended by a massive chain of golden lustre. So I replied that he probably paid a thousand dollars for it in New York. "Capital!" exclaimed Brigham. "I made it myself! That circle is a cartwheel which I washed and gilded; it hangs by a pair of gilt ox-chains; and the ornaments of the candlesticks were all cut after my patterns out of sheet-tin!"