About this time several of the audience left the car, but the lecturer continued to relate how Smith, junior, his father and brothers, and a few disciples founded the religion of the Latter-day Saints, which can count its converts not only in America, but in Scandinavia, England, and Germany. Also how a colony was established in Ohio, where a temple was erected at a cost of two hundred thousand dollars, and a town built at Kirkland. How Smith became an opulent banker, and received a papyrus scroll written by Abraham and several celebrated Egyptians. The narrative being very tiresome, the greater part of the audience decamped, but the lecturer nevertheless continued his tale respecting Joe Smith, his bankruptcy, his tarring and feathering, his reappearance at Independence, Missouri, as the head of a flourishing community of about three thousand disciples, his pursuit, and settlement in the Far West. By this time Passe-partout and ten others were all that remained of the audience, who were informed that after much persecution Smith reappeared in Illinois and founded the beautiful city of Nauvoo, on the Mississippi, of which he became chief magistrate; how he became a candidate for the Presidency of the United States; how he was drawn into an ambuscade at Carthage, imprisoned, and assassinated by a band of masked murderers. Passe-partout was now absolutely the only listener, and the lecturer looking him steadily in the face recalled to his memory the actions of the pious Brigham Young, and showed him how the colony of Mormon had flourished. "And this is why the jealousy of Congress is roused against us. Shall we yield to force? Never! Driven from State to State we shall yet find an independent soil on which to rest and erect our tents. And you," he continued to Passe-partout, "and you, my brother, will not you pitch your tent beneath the shadow of our flag?" "No," replied Passe-partout firmly, as he walked away, leaving the Mormon elder by himself. While the lecturer had been holding forth the train had been progressing rapidly, and had reached the north-west extremity of Salt Lake. From that point the passengers could see this immense inland sea--the Dead Sea, as it is sometimes called, and into which an American Jordan flows. It is even now a splendid sheet of water, but time and the falling-in of the banks have in some degree reduced its ancient size. Salt Lake is seventy miles long and thirty-five wide, and is more than three miles above the level of the sea. Though quite different from Lake Asphaltites, it contains salt in large quantities. The specific gravity of the water is one thousand one hundred and seventy; the same distilled is one thousand. No fish can live in it; and though brought down by the Jordan, Weber, and other rivers, soon perish; but it is not true that its density is so great that no men can swim in it.