Nothing was heard from General Harney, and in his absence no one possessed instructions adequate to the emergency. To understand the movements which followed, it is necessary to describe briefly the topography of the country between Green River and the Great Salt Lake. The entire interval, one hundred and fifty miles in breadth, is filled with groups and chains of mountains, the direct route through which to Salt Lake City lies along water-courses, following them through cañons so narrow that little science is necessary to render the natural defences impregnable. In this respect, and in the general character of the scenery, it bears much resemblance to the Tyrol. In the narrowest of these gorges, Echo Cañon, twenty-five miles in length, whose walls of rock often approach within a stone's throw of each other, it became known that the Mormons were erecting breastworks and digging ditches, by means of which they expected to be able to submerge the road to the depth of several feet, for miles. The only known mode of avoiding a passage through this gorge was by a circuitous route, following the eastern slope of the rim of the Great Basin northward, more than a hundred miles, to Soda Springs, at the northern bend of Bear River, the principal tributary of the Salt Lake,--then crossing the rim along the course of the river, and pursuing its valley southward, and that of the Roseaux or Malade, into Salt Lake Valley. The distance of Salt Lake City from the camp on Ham's Fork was by this route nearly three hundred miles,--while the distance by the road past Fort Bridger, through the cañons, was less than one hundred and fifty miles. At that fort, about twenty miles west from the encampment of the army, the Mormon marauding parties had their head-quarters and principal _dépôt_. It was there that Colonel Alexander was ordered, about this time, by Brigham Young, to surrender his arms to the Mormon Quartermaster-General, on which condition and an agreement to depart eastward early the following spring, he and his troops should be fed during the winter; otherwise, Young added, they would perish from hunger and cold, and rot among the mountains. In his perplexity, Colonel Alexander called a council of war, and, with its approval, resolved to commence a march towards Soda Springs, leaving Fort Bridger unmolested on his left. For more than a fortnight the army toiled along Ham's Fork, cutting a road through thickets of greasewood and wild sage, incumbered by a train of such unwieldy length that often the advance-guard reached its camp at night before the rear-guard had moved from the camp of the preceding day, and harassed by Mormon marauding parties from the Fort, which hung about the flanks out of the reach of rifle-shot, awaiting opportunities to descend on unprotected wagons and cattle. The absence of dragoons prevented a dispersion of these banditti. Some companies of infantry were, indeed,