I closed and fastened the gate, and started on past her. Three feet beyond the doorsteps I was brought to a standstill: the ground as far as I could see was water-soaked; it was like a saturated sponge. Utah is dominated by Irrigation; she is a slave to her water supply. One going there from the land of rains has much to learn of the possibilities and the inconveniences of water. I was always stumbling upon it in new combinations and unaccustomed places, and I never could get used to its vagaries. Books written in the interest of the Territory indulge in rhapsodies over the fact that every man is his own rain-maker; and I admit that the arrangement has its advantages--to the cultivator. But judging from the standpoint of an outsider, I should say that man is not an improvement upon the original providence which distributes the staff of life to plants elsewhere, spreading the vital fluid over the whole land, so evenly that every grass blade gets its due share; and as all parts are wet at once, so all are dry at the same time, and the surplus, if there be any, runs in well-appointed ways, with delight to both eye and ear. All this is changed when the office of Jupiter Pluvius devolves upon man; different indeed are his methods. A man turns a stream loose in a field or pasture, and it wanders whither it will over the ground. The grass hides it, and the walker, bird-student or botanist, steps splash into it without the slightest warning. This is always unpleasant, and is sometimes disastrous, as when one attempts to cross the edge of a field of some close-growing crop, and instantly sinks to the top of the shoes in the soft mud. On the morning spoken of, I stopped before the barrier, considering how I should pass it, when the woman showed me a narrow passage between the house and the stone wall, through which I could reach the higher ground at the back. I took this path, and in a moment was in the grove of young oaks which made her out-of-doors kitchen and yard. A fire was burning merrily in the stove, which stood under a tree; frying-pans and baking-tins, dippers and dishcloths, hung on the outer wall of her little house, and the whole had a camping-out air that was captivating, and possible only in a rainless land. I longed to linger and study this open-air housekeeping; if that woman had only been a bird! But I passed on through the oak-grove back yard, following a path the horses had made, till I reached an open place where I could overlook the lower land, filled with clumps of willows with their feet in the water, and rosebushes "O'erburdened with their weight of flowers, And drooping 'neath their own sweet scent."