e City we began 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 sage-brush and _grama_,--the
former, the homely gray-leaved plant of our Eastern goose-stuffing,
grown into a dwarf tree six feet high, with a twisted trunk sometimes as
thick as a man's body; the latter, a stunted species of herbage, growing
in ash-tinted spirals, only two inches from the ground, and giving the
Plains an appearance of being matted with curled hair or gray
corkscrews. Its other name is "buffalo-grass"; and in spite of its
dinginess, with the assistance of the sage, converting all the Plains
west of Fort Kearney into a model Quaker landscape, it is one of the
most nutritious varieties of cattle-fodder, and for hundreds of miles
the emigrant-drover's only dependence.

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 ashen monotony, as an old home-strain
mollifies the ear irritated by the protracted rhythmic clash or the
dull, steady buzz of iron machinery. Contrasting the Mormon settlements
with their surrounding desolation, we could not wonder that their
success has fortified this people in their delusion. The superficial
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.

The close observer soon notices a painful deficiency in these green and
smiling Mormon settlements. Everything has been done for the
farm,--nothing for the home. That blessed old Anglo-Saxon idea seems
everywhere quite extinct. The fields are billowing over with dense,
golden grain, the cattle are wallowing in emerald lakes of juicy grass,
the barns are substantial, the family-windmill buzzes merrily on its
well-oiled pivot, drawing water or grinding feed, the fruit-trees are
thrifty,--but the house is desolate. Even where its owner is
particularly well off, and its architecture somewhat more ambitious than
the average, (though, as yet, this superiority is measure