Sinners and Saints: A Tour Across the States and Round Them, with Three Months Among the MormonsRobinson, Phil
General
Sinners and Saints: A Tour Across the States and Round Them, with Three Months Among the Mormons
Robinson, Phil
Latter Day Saint churches; Utah -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
SOON after leaving Glenwood, cultivation dies out, and for twelve miles
or so the rabbit-brush and grease-wood--the "atriplex" of disagreeably
scientific travellers, who always speak of sage-brush as "artemisia,"
and disguise the gentle chipmunk as "spermophilus"--divide the land
between them. The few flowers, and these all dwarfed varieties, attest
the poverty of the soil. The mountains, however, do their best to
redeem the landscape, and the scenery, as desolate scenery, is very
fine. The ranges that have on either hand rolled along an unbroken
series of monotonous contour, now break up into every conceivable
variety of form, mimicking architecture or rather multiplying its
types, and piling bluffs, pierced with caves, upon terraces, and
pinnacles upon battlements. Causeways, like that in Echo Canyon, slant
down their slopes, and other vestiges of a terrific aqueous action
abound. Next to this riot of rock comes a long series of low hills,
grey, red, and yellow, utterly destitute of vegetation, and so smooth
that it looks as if the place were a mountain-yard, where Nature
made her mountains, and had collected all her materials about her in
separate convenient mounds before beginning to mix up and fuse. In
places they were richly spangled with mica, giving an appearance of
sparkling, trickling water to the barren slopes.
On the other side of the valley, the mountains, discountenancing such
frivolities, had settled down into solid-bottomed masses of immense
bulk, the largest mountains, in superficial acreage, I had seen all the
journey, and densely cedared.
With Gunnison in sight across the valley, we reached Willow Creek,
a pleasant diversion of water and foliage in the dreary landscape,
and an eventful spot in the last Indian war, for among these willows
here Black Hawk made a stand to dispute the Mormons' pursuit of their
plundered stock, and held the creek, too, all the day. And so out on to
the monotonous grease-wood levels again--an Indians' camp fire among
the cedars, the only sign of a living thing--and over another "divide,"
and so into the Sevier Valley. The river is seen flowing along the
central depression, with the Red-Mound settlement on the other side of
the stream, and Salina on this side of it, lying on ahead.
Salina is one of those places it is very hard to catch. You see it
first "about seven" miles off, and after travelling towards it for
an hour and a half, find you have still "eight miles or so" to go.
"Appearances are very deceptive in this country," as these people
delight in saying to new-comers, and the following story is punctually
told, at every opportunity, to illustrate it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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