It was getting late upon a fine winter’s evening when our coach crossed the brow of a hill and we caught sight of the calm blue waters of the Great Salt Lake surrounded by snow-covered mountains. It was a quiet scene of singular beauty. The skies were brilliant with the glowing effects caused by the rays of the declining sun. It was nearly dark when we arrived at the City of the Mormons and our horses were pulled up at the door of an attractive little inn which Brigham Young had provided for the accommodation of strangers. After quitting the prosperous lands of Utah on my way to California I stopped in the centre of that part of the American desert situated near the borders of Oregon and bounded on the west by the ranges of the Sierra Nevada. It was my object to visit a tribe of Shoshones who were then encamped in the neighbourhood. I found them dwelling on a dreary and exposed plateau in the midst of a region covered with small black volcanic stones and fragments (or flakes) of obsidian, with which an old arrow head maker was busily engaged fashioning the rude weapons required by the tribe. It was the middle of December. The winter was cold, and the country around looked bleak and desolate. The Indians were in wigwams made of saplings or withies, bent over in such a manner as to form the shape of a semi-circle or a low rounded beehive. They resembled, in their construction and size, the temporary huts used by wandering bands of Chippewas upon the shores of Lake Superior. The interiors of these rude and miserable lodges were not inviting. Squalor, dirt and gloom were present to the eye, and influenced the mind. [Illustration: INDIAN, SALT LAKE VALLEY, UTAH.] The men differed to some extent from all other Indians that I had seen, and were in appearance like the Asiatics in the southern Provinces of China, and had not the massive heads and aquiline features of the Dakotas or Pawnees; they were also of a more debased type. This, however, may have been the result of many centuries of struggles against starvation and exposure to the severe weather that must be experienced in the deserts upon which they wander. Outside the main part of the encampment there was a small group of wigwams, which I found to be occupied by Utes, a tribe even more degraded and wretched than the Shoshones. The Utes, or Digger Indians, have always been considered to be the lowest in civilization of all the American tribes. It has been thought that they may be the descendants of outcasts, but this opinion does not seem to be based upon sufficient evidence. There are good reasons for believing that they are allied in race and language with the Shoshones, and they are apparently treated by them on terms of friendship and equality.