From Burton:
At Bridger the road forks: the northern line leads to Soda or Beer Springs, the southern to Great Salt Lake City. Following the latter, we crossed the rough timber bridges that spanned the net work of streams, and entered upon another expanse of degraded ground, covered as usual with water rolled pebbles of granite and porphyry, flint and greenstone. On the left was a butte with steep bluff sides called the Race course: the summit, a perfect mesa, is said to be quite level, and to measure exactly a mile round - the rule of the American hippodrome. Like these earth formations generally, it points out the ancient level of the land before water had washed away the outer film of earth's crust. The climate in this part, as indeed every where between the South Pass and the Great Salt Lake Valley, was an exaggeration of the Italian, with hot days, cool nights, and an incomparable purity and tenuity of atmosphere. We passed on the way a party of emigrants, numbering 359 souls and driving 39 wagons. They were commanded by the patriarch of Mormondom, otherwise Captain John Smith, the eldest son of Hyrum Smith, a brother of Mr Joseph Smith the Prophet, and who, being a child at the time of the murderous affair at Carthage, escaped being coiffe'd with the crown of martyrdom. He rose to the patriarchate on the 18th of February 1855: his predecessor was "old John Smith," - uncle to Mr Joseph and successor to Mr Hyrum Smith, - who died the 23d of May 1854. He was a fair complexioned man with light hair. His followers accepted gratefully some provisions with which we could afford to part. (p 179)
After passing the Mormons we came upon a descent which appeared little removed from an angle of 35d, and suggested the propriety of walking down. There was an attempt at a zigzag, and for the benefit of wagons, a rough wall of stones had been run along the sharper corners. At the foot of the hill we remounted, and passing through a wooded bottom, reached at 12:15 PM - after fording the Big Muddy - Little Muddy Creek, upon whose banks stood the station. Both these streams are branches of the Ham's Fork of Green River; and according to the well known :rule of contrairy: their waters are clear as crystal, showing every pebble in their beds. (p 180)
Little Muddy was kept by a Canadian, a chatty lively good humored fellow blessed with a sour English wife. Possibly the heat - the thermometer showed 95d F in the shade - had turned her temper; fortunately it had not similarly affected the milk and cream, which were both unusually good. Jean Baptiste, having mistaken me for a Francaise de France, a being which he seemed to regard as little lower than the angels, - I was at no pains to disabuse him, - was profuse in his questionings concerning his imperial majesty the emperor, carefully confounding him with the first of the family, and so pleased was he with my responses, that for the first time on that route I found a man ready to spurn cet animal feroce qu on appdle la piece de cinq francs: in other words the "almighty dollar." (p 180)
We bade adieu to Little Muddy at noon, and entered a new country, a broken land of spurs and hollows, in parts absolutely bare, in others clothed with a thick vegetation. Curiously shaped hills, and bluffs of red earth capped with a clay which much resembled snow, bore a thick growth of tall firs and pines whose sombre uniform contrasted strangely with the brilliant leek like excessive green foliage, and the tall note paper colored trunks of the ravine loving quaking asp (Populus tremuloides). The mixture of colors was bizarre in the extreme, and the lay of the land, an uncouth system of converging, diverging, and parallel ridges, with deep divisions - in one of these ravines which is unusually broad and grassy, rise the so called Copperas Springs, was hardly less striking. We ran winding along a crest of rising ground, passing rapidly, by way of farther comparison, two wretched Mormons, man and woman, who were driving, at a snail's pace, a permanently lamed ox, and after a long ascent stood upon the summit of Quaking Asp Hill. (p 180-1)
Quaking Asp Hill, according to the drivers, is 1,000 feet higher than the South Pass, which would exalt its station to 8,400 feet; other authorities, however, reduce it to 7,900. The descent was long and rapid, so rapid indeed, that oftentimes when the block of wood which formed our brake dropped a bit of the old shoe sole nailed upon it to prevent ignition, I felt, as man may be excused for feeling, that catching of the breath that precedes the first five barred gate after a night of "heavy wet." The sides of the road were rich in vegetation, stunted oak, black jack, and box elder of the stateliest stature; above rose the wild cherry, and the service tree formed the bushes below. The descent, besides being decidedly sharp, was exceedingly devious, and our frequent "shaves," - a train of Mormon wagons was crawling down at the same time, - made us feel somewhat thankful that we reached the bottom without broken bones. (p 181)
The train was commanded by a Captain Murphy, who, as one might expect from the name, had hoisted the Stars and Stripes - it was the only instance of such loyalty seen by us on the Plains. The emigrants had left Council Bluffs on the 20th of June, an unusually late date, and though weather beaten, all looked well. Inspirited by our success in surmounting the various difficulties of the way, we "poked fun" at an old Yorkshireman who was assumed, by way of mirth, to be a Calebs in search of polygamy at an epoch of life when perhaps the blessing might come too late: and at an exceedingly plain middle aged and full blooded negro woman, who was fairly warned - the children of Ham are not admitted to the communion of the Saints, and consequently to the forgiveness of sins and a free seat in Paradise - that she was "carrying coals to Newcastle." (p 181)
As the rays of the sun began to slant we made Sulphur Creek; it lies at the foot of a mountain called Rim Base, because it is the eastern wall of the great inland basin; westward of this point the waters can no longer reach the Atlantic or the Pacific; each is destined to feed the lakes,
Nce Oceani pervenit ad undas
Beyond Sulphur Creek, too, the face of the country changes; the sedimentary deposits are no longer seen, the land is broken and confused, upheaved into huge masses of rock and mountains broken by deep kanyons, ravines, and water gaps, and drained by innumerable streamlets. The exceedingly irregular lay of the land makes the road devious, and the want of level ground, which is found only in dwarf parks and prairillons, would greatly add to the expense of a railway. We crossed the creek, a fetid stagnant water, about ten feet wide, lying in a bed of black infected mud; during the spring rains, when flowing, it is said to be wholesome enough. On the southern side of the valley there are some fine fountains, and on the eastern are others strongly redolent of sulphur; broad seams of coal crop out from the northern bluffs, and about a mile distant in the opposite direction are the Tar Springs, useful for greasing wagon wheels and curing galled backed horses. (p 181-2)
Following the valley, which was rough and broken as it well could be, we crossed a small divide, and came upon the plain of the Bear River, a translation of the Indian Kuiyapa. It is one of the most important tributaries of the Great Salt Lake. Heading in the Uinta Range to the east of Kamas Prairie, it flows with a tortuous course to the northwest, till reaching Beer Springs it turns sharply round with a horseshoe bend, and sets to the southwest, falling into the general reservoir at a bight called Bear River Bay. According to the mountaineers, it springs not far from the sources of the Weber River and of the Timpanogos Water. Coal was found some years ago upon the banks of the Bear River, and more lately near Weber River and Silver Creek. It is the easternmost point to which Mormonism can extend main forte: for fugitives from justice, "over Bear River" is like "over Jordan." The aspect of the valley, here half a mile broad, was prepossessing. Beyond a steep terrace, or step which compelled us all to dismount, the clear stream, about 400 feet in width, flowed through narrow lines of willows, cotton wood, and large trees, which waved in the cool refreshing western wind; grass carpeted the middle levels, and above all rose red cliffs and buttresses of frowning rock. (p 182)
We reached the station at 5:30 PM. The valley was dotted with the tents of the Mormon emigrants, and we received sundry visits of curiosity: the visitors, mostly of the sex conventionally termed the fair, contented themselves with entering, sitting down, looking hard, tittering to one another, and departing with Parthian glances that had little power to hurt. From the men we heard tidings of "a massacree" of emigrants in the north, and a defeat of Indians in the west. Mr Myers, the station master, was an English Saint, who had lately taken to himself a fifth wife, after severally divorcing the others; his last choice was not without comeliness, but her reserve was extreme; she could hardly be coaxed out of a "Yes sir," I found Mr Myers diligently perusing a translation of "Volney's Ruins of Empire"; we had a chat about the Old and the New Country, which led us to sleeping time. I had here a curious instance of the effect of the association of words, in hearing a by stander apply to the Founder of Christianity the "Mr." which is the Kyrios of the West, and is always prefixed to "Joseph Smith": he stated that the mission of the latter was "far ahead of" that of the former prophet - which, by the by, is not the strict Mormon doctrine. My companion and his family preferred as usual the interior of the mail wagon, and it was well that they did so; after a couple of hours, entered Mr Macarthy, very drunk and "fighting mad." He called for supper, but supper was past and gone, so he supped upon "fids" of raw meat. Excited by this lively food he began a series of caprioles, which ended as might be expected, in a rough and tumble with the other three youths who occupied the hard floor of the ranch. To Mr Macarthy's language on that occasion; every word was apparently English, but so perverted, misused, and mangled, that the home reader would hardly have distinguished it from High Dutch: eg I'm intire mad as a meat axe; now du do' t, I tell ye; say, you shut up in a winkin, or I ll be chawed up if I don t run over you; can t come that 'ere tarnal carryin' on over me, and0 si sic omnia! As no weapons, revolvers, or bowie knives were to the fore, I thought the best thing was to lie still and let the storm blow over, which it did in a quarter of an hour. Then, all serene, Mr Macarthy called for a pipe, excused himself ceremoniously to himself for taking the liberty with the Cap's meerschaum, solely upon the grounds that it was the only article of the kind to be found at so late an hour, and presently fell into a deep slumber upon a sleeping contrivance composed of a table for the upper, and a chair for the lower portion of his person. I envied him the favors of Morpheus: the fire soon died out, the cold wind whistled through the crannies, and the floor was knotty and uneven. (p 182-3)
From Orion: Monday, Aug. 5.—52 miles further on, near the head of Echo Canon, were encamped 60 soldiers from Camp Floyd. Yesterday they fired upon 300 or 400 Utes, whom they supposed gathered for no good purpose. The Indians returned the fire, when the soldiers chased them four miles, took four prisoners, talked with and released them, and then talked with their chief. Echo Canon is 20 miles long, with many sandstone cliffs, (red) in curious shapes, and often rising perpendicularly 400 feet.
"Echo Canyon is twenty miles long. It was like a long, smooth, narrow street, with a gradual descending grade, and shut in by enormous perpendicular walls of coarse conglomerate, four hundred feet high in many places, and turreted like mediaeval castles. This was the most faultless piece of road in the mountains, and the driver said he would “let his team out.” He did, and if the Pacific express trains whiz through there now any faster than we did then in the stage-coach, I envy the passengers the exhilaration of it. We fairly seemed to pick up our wheels and fly—and the mail matter was lifted up free from everything and held in solution! I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a thing I mean it." (Roughing It)
Echo Kanyon, August 24th
At 8 15 AM we were once more en voyage. ...
After fording Bear River - this part of the land was quite a grave yard - we passed over rough ground and, descending into a bush, were shown on a ridge to the right a huge Stonehenge, a crown of broken and somewhat lanceolate perpendicular conglomerates or cemented pudding stones called not inappropriately Needle Rocks. At Egan's Creek, a tributary of the Yellow Creek, the wild geraniums and the willows flourished despite the six feet of snow which sometimes lies in these bottoms. We then crossed Yellow Creek, a water trending northeastward, and feeding, like those hitherto forded, Bear River: the bottom, a fine broad meadow, was a favorite camping ground, as the many fire places proved. Beyond the stream we ascended Yellow Creek Hill, a steep chain which divides the versant of the Bear River eastward from that of Weber River to the west. The ascent might be avoided, but the view from the summit is a fine panorama. The horizon behind us is girt by a mob of hills, Bridger's Range, silver veined upon a dark blue ground: nearer, mountains and rocks, cones and hog backs are scattered about in admirable confusion, divided by shaggy rollers and dark ravines, each with its own little water course. In front the eye runs down the long bright red line of Echo Kanyon, and rests with astonishment upon its novel and curious features, the sublimity of its broken and jagged peaks, divided by dark abysses, and based upon huge piles of disjointed and scattered rock. On the right, about half a mile north of the road, and near the head of the kanyon is a place that adds human interest to the scene. Cache Cave is a dark, deep, natural tunnel in the rock, which has sheltered many a hunter and trader from wild weather and wilder men: the wall is probably of marl and earthy limestone, whose whiteness is set off by the ochrish brick red of the ravine below. (p 183-4)
Echo Kanyon has a total length of twentv-five to thirty miles, and runs in a southeasterly direction to the Weber River. Near the head it is from half to three quarters of a mile wide, but its irregularity is such that no average breadth can be assigned to it. The height of the buttresses on the right or northern side varies from 300 to 500; feet they are denuded and water washed by the storms that break upon them under the influence of southerly gales; their strata here are almost horizontal; they are inclined at an angle of 45°, and the strike is northeast and southwest. The opposite or southern flank, being protected from the dashing and weathering of rain and wind, is a mass of rounded soil clad hills, or sloping slabs of rock, earth veiled, and growing tussocks of grass. Between them runs the clear swift bubbling stream in a pebbly bed now hugging one then the other side of the chasm: it has cut its way deeply below the surface; the banks or benches of stiff alluvium are not unfrequently twenty feet high; in places it is partially dammed by the hand of Nature, and every where the watery margin is of the brightest green and overgrown with grass, nettles, willow thickets, in which the hop is conspicuous, quaking asp, and other taller trees. Echo Kanyon has but one fault: its sublimity will make all similar features look tame. (p 184)
We entered the kanyon in somewhat a serious frame of mind; our team was headed by a pair of exceedingly restive mules; we had remonstrated against the experimental driving being done upon our vile bodies, but the reply was that the animals must be harnessed at some time. We could not, however, but remark the wonderful picturesqueness of a scene - of a nature which in parts seemed lately to have undergone some grand catastrophe. The gigantic red wall on our right was divided into distinct blocks or quarries by a multitude of minor lateral kanyons, which, after rains, add their tribute to the main artery, and each block was subdivided by the crumbling of the softer and the resistance of the harder material - a clay conglomerate. The color varied in places from white and green, to yellow, but for the most part it was a dull ochrish red, that brightened up almost to a straw tint where the sunbeams fell slantingly upon it from the strip of blue above. All served to set off the curious architecture of the smaller masses. A whole Petra was there, a system of projecting prisms, pyramids and pagoda towers, a variety of form that enabled you to see whatever your peculiar vanity might be; columns, porticoes, facades, and pedestals. Twin lines of bluffs, a succession of buttresses all fretted and honeycombed, a double row of steeples slipped from perpendicularity, frowned at each other across the gorge. And the wondrous variety was yet more varied by the kaleidoscopic transformation caused by change of position: at every different point the same object bore a different aspect. (p 184-5)
......
After a total of eighteen miles we passed Echo Station, a half built ranch, flanked by well piled haystacks for future mules. The ravine narrowed as we advanced to a mere gorge, and the meanderings of the stream contracted the road and raised the banks to a more perilous height. A thicker vegetation occupied the bottom, wild roses and dwarfish oaks contending for the mastery of the ground. About four miles from the station we were shown a defile where the Latter Day Saints, in 1857, headed by General DH Wells, now the third member of the Presidency, had prepared modern Caudine Forks for the attacking army of the United States. .... (p 187)
Traces of beaver were frequent in the torrent bed; the "broad tailed animal" is now molested by the Indians rather than by the whites. On this stage magpies and ravens were unusually numerous; foxes slunk away from us, and on one of the highest bluffs a coyote stood as on a pedestal; as near Baffin Sea, these craggy peaks are their favorite howling places during the severe snowy winters. We longed for a thunder storm: flashing lightnings, roaring thunders, stormy winds, and dashing rains - in fact a tornado - would be the fittest setting for such a picture so wild, so sublime as Echo Kanyon. But we longed in vain. The day was persistently beautiful, calm and mild, as a May forenoon in the Grecian Archipelago. We were also disappointed in our natural desire to hold some converse with the nymph who had lent her name to the ravine - the reverberation is said to be remarkably fine - but the temper of our animals would not have endured it, and the place was not one that admitted experiments. Rain had lately fallen, as we saw from the mud puddles in the upper course of the kanyon, and the road was in places pitted with drops which were not frequent enough to allay the choking dust. A fresh yet familiar feature now appeared. The dews, whose existence we had forgotten on the prairies, were cold and clammy in the early mornings; the moist air, condensed by contact with the cooler substances on the surface of the ground, stood in large drops upon the leaves and grasses. As we advanced the bed of the ravine began to open out, the angle of descent became more obtuse; a stretch of level ground appeared in front where for some hours the windings of the kanyon had walled us in, and at 2:30 PM we debouched upon the Weber River Station. It lies at the very mouth of the ravine almost under the shadow of lofty red bluffs, called "The Obelisks," and the green and sunny landscape contrasting with the sterile grandeur behind, is exceedingly pleasing. (p 187-8)
After the emotions of the drive, a little rest was by no means unpleasant. The station was tolerably comfortable, and the welcome addition of potatoes and onions to our usual fare was not to be despised. The tenants of the ranch were Mormons, civil and communicative. They complained sadly of the furious rain storms, which the funnel like gorge brings down upon them, and the cold draughts from five feet deep of snow which pour down upon the milder valley. (p 188)
Horace Greeley:
Fort Bridger, whence my last was sent, may be regarded as the terminus in this direction of the Great American Desert. Not that the intervening country is fertile or productive, for it is neither; but at Bridger its character visibly changes. The hills we here approach are thinly covered with a straggling growth of low, scraggy cedar; the sage-bush continues even into this valley, but it is no longer universal and almost alone; grass is more frequent and far more abundant; Black’s Fork, which, a few miles below, runs whitish with the clay-wash of the desert, is here a clear, sparkling mountain torrent, divided into half a dozen streams by the flat, pebbly islets on which the little village—or rather post—is located; ...
From Fort Bridger ... the Salt Lake trail rises over a high, broad ridge, then descends a very steep, rocky, difficult hill to Big Muddy, branch of Black’s Fork, where—12 miles from Bridger—is the Mail Company’s station, at which we had expected to spend the night. But the next drive is 60 miles, and our new conductor wisely decided to cut a piece off of it that evening, as the road at the other end was hazardous in a dark night. So we moved on a little after sundown, rising over another broad ridge, and, after narrowly escaping an upset in a gully dug in the trail by that day’s violent shower, camped 15 miles on, a little after 11 p.m.... At daylight we were all astir, and drove down to Bear River, only three or four miles distant, for breakfast.
Fording Bear River—here a swift, rocky-bottomed creek, now perhaps forty yards wide, but hardly three feet deep—we rose gradually through a grassy valley, partially inclosed by high, perpendicular stone Buttes, especially on the right. The stone (evidently once clay) outposts of one of the Buttes are known as “The Needles.” We thence descended a long, steep hill into the valley of “Lost Creek,”—why “lost,” I could not divine, as the creek is plainly there—a fair trout-brook, running through a grassy meadow, between high hills, over which we made our way into the head of “Echo Cañon,” down which we jogged some twenty miles to Weber River.
This cañon reminded me afresh that evil and good are strongly interwoven in our early lot. Throughout the desolate region which stretches from the Sweetwater nearly or quite to Bridger, we had in the main the best natural road I ever traveled—dusty, indeed, and, in places, abrupt and rough, but equal in the average to the carefully-made and annually-repaired roads of New England. But in this fairly-grassed ravine, hemmed in by steep, picturesque bluffs, with springs issuing from their bases, and gradually gathering into a trout-brook as we neared the Weber, we found the “going decidedly bad,” and realized that in the dark it could not but be dangerous. For the brook, with its welcome fringe of yellow, choke-cherry, service-berry, and other shrubs, continually zigzagged from side to side of the cañon, compelling us to descend and ascend its precipitous banks, and cross its sometimes miry bed, often with a smart chance of breaking an axle, or upsetting.
We stopped to feed and dine at the site of “General Well’s Camp” during the Mormon War of 1857-8, and passed, ten miles below, the fortifications constructed under his orders in that famous campaign. They seem childish affairs, more suited to the genius of Chinese than of civilized warfare. I cannot believe that they would have stopped the Federal troops, if even tolerably led, for more than an hour.
We reached our next station on the Weber, a little after 5, p. m., and did not leave till after an early breakfast next (yesterday) morning. The Weber is, perhaps, a little larger than the Bear, and runs through a deep, narrow, rugged valley, with no cultivation so far as we saw it. Two “groceries,” a blacksmith’s-shop, and the mail-station, are all the habitations we passed in following down it some four or five miles to the shaky polebridge, on which we crossed, though it is usually fordable.