Utah, some sixteen hundred miles from Chicago. The site of the present
town was an unbroken wilderness so late as 1838, but it now boasts a
population of twenty-six thousand souls. The peculiar people who have
established themselves here, have by industry and a complete system of
irrigation, brought the entire valley to a degree of fertility
unsurpassed by the same number of square miles on this continent. It is
not within our province to discuss the domestic life of the Mormons. No
portrait of them, however, will prove a likeness which does not clearly
depict their twofold features; namely, their thrift and their iniquity.
Contact with a truer condition of civilization, and the enforcement of
United States laws, are slowly, but it is believed surely, reducing the
numbers of the self-entitled "saints." Mormon missionaries, however,
still seek to make proselytes in France, Norway, Sweden, and Great
Britain, addressing themselves always to the most ignorant classes.
These poor half-starved creatures are helped to emigrate, believing that
they are coming to a land flowing with milk and honey. In most cases any
change with them would be for their advantage; and so the ranks of
Mormonism are recruited, not from any truly religious impulse in the new
disciples, but through a desire to better their physical condition.

From Utah, two days and a night passed in the cars will take us over the
six hundred intervening miles to San Francisco. The route passes through
the Sierra Nevada Mountains, presenting scenery which recalls the grand
gorges and snow-clad peaks of Switzerland and Norway, characterized by
deep canyons, lofty wooded elevations, and precipitous declivities. At
the several railway stations specimens of the native Shoshones, Piutes,
and other tribes of Indians are seen lazily sunning themselves in
picturesque groups. The men are dirty and uncouth examples of humanity,
besmeared with yellow ochre and vermilion; their dress consisting of
loose flannel blankets and deerskin leggings, their rude hats decked
with eagle feathers. The women are wrapped in striped blankets and wear
red flannel leggings, both sexes being furnished with buckskin
moccasins. The women are fond of cheap ornaments, colored glass beads,
and brass ear-rings. About every other one has a baby strapped to her
back in a flat basket. Men and squaws wear their coarse jet-black hair
in long, untidy locks, hanging over their bronzed necks and faces. War,
wh