The army moved slowly forward during the progress of these negotiations. In Echo Cañon, it had an opportunity to inspect the bugbear of the previous autumn,--the Mormon fortifications. As the cañon--which is more than twenty miles long--approaches the Weber River, it dwindles in width from five or six hundred yards to as many feet. Its northern side becomes a perfect wall of rock, which rises perpendicularly to the height of several hundred feet above the road. The southern side retains the character of a steep mountain-slope covered with grass and stunted bushes. Echo Creek, a narrow streamlet, with its dense fringe of willows, fills the whole bottom between the road and the bluffs. The first indication of approach to the fortifications was the sight of piles of stones heaped into walls four or five feet high, pierced with loopholes, and visible on every projecting point of the cliffs along the northern side, from most of which a pebble could be snapped down upon the road. Just beyond, after turning a bend in the cañon, all the willows along the creek had been cut away, and through the cleared space a ditch five or six feet wide and ten feet deep was dug across the bottom. The dirt thrown from it was packed so as to form an embankment, on which logs were so arranged that it would answer for a breastwork, behind which riflemen could be posted under cover. At intervals of about a hundred yards were two similar lines of ditch and breastwork, by the first of which the road was forced to skirt the very base of a cliff which had probably been mined. The other line was constructed just above the mouths of two narrow gorges which enter the cañon, nearly opposite one another, from the north and south. By the aid of these dams the cañon might possibly have been overflowed for half a mile to the depth of several feet, but the water would have accumulated slowly on account of the insignificant size of the creek. Several dirt walls stretched also across the gorges, commanding the whole of the fortifications below. This whole system of defences possessed as little strength as merit. It served only to confirm the impression, which by this time had become general, that the capacity of the Mormons to resist the army had been greatly overrated, and that a vigorous effort to penetrate to the Valley early in the spring would inevitably have succeeded.