*(Here Artemus would leave the rostrum for a few moments, and pretend to be engaged behind.  The picture was painted for a night-scene, and the effect intended to be produced was that of the moon rising over the lake and rippling on the waters.  It was produced in the usual dioramic way, by making the track of the moon transparent and throwing the moon on from the bull's eye of the lantern.  When Artemus went behind, the moon would become nervous and flickering, dancing up and down in the most inartistic and undecided manner.  The result was that, coupled with the lecturer's oddly expressed apology, the "moon" became one of the best laughed-at parts of the entertainment.) I shall be most happy to pay a good salary to any respectable boy of good parentage and education who is a good moonist. The Endowment House. In this building the Mormon is initiated into the mysteries of the faith. Strange stories are told of the proceedings which are held in this building--but I have no possible means of knowing how true they may be. Salt Lake City is fifty-five miles behind us--and this is Echo Canyon--in reaching which we are supposed to have crossed the summit of the Wahsatch Mountains.  These ochre-colored bluffs--formed of conglomerate sandstone--and full of fossils--signal the entrance to the Canyon.  At its base lies Weber Station. Echo Canyon is about twenty-five miles long.  It is really the sublimest thing between the Missouri and the Sierra Nevada.  The red wall to the left develops farther up the Canyon into pyramids--buttresses--and castles--honey-combed and fretted in nature's own massive magnificence of architecture. In 1856--Echo Canyon was the place selected by Brigham Young for the Mormon General Wells to fortify and make impregnable against the advance of the American army--led by General Albert Sidney Johnson.  It was to have been the Thermopylae of Mormondom--but it wasn't. General Wells was to have done Leonidas--but he didn't. A more cheerful view of the Desert. The wild snowstorms have left us--and we have thrown our wolf-skin overcoats aside.  Certain tribes of far-western Indians bury their distinguished dead by placing them high in air and covering them with valuable furs--that is a very fair representation of these mid-air tombs.  Those animals are horses--I know they are--because my artist says so.  I had the picture two years before I discovered the fact.--The artist came to me about six months ago--and said--"It is useless to disguise it from you any longer--they are horses." It was while crossing this desert that I was surrounded by a band of Ute Indians.  They were splendidly mounted--they were dressed in beaver-skins--and they were armed with rifles--knives--and pistols.