cannot be commended as restful, especially when an hour or two of delay had to be made up to secure arrival at Austin at eleven on Sunday morning.

Austin was at that time the capital of the State of Nevada. There were certainly less than the Constitutional number of eighty thousand people in the territory when it was admitted with all speed to the rights of a State. Some people say it was to strengthen the Republican majority in the Senate by the two new votes. But this is no business of us English. Excepting at the Comstock Lode and other silver mines, and some two thousand people at Austin, there was really no population worth mention. Nothing but sage brush for hundreds of miles, with just a few pasture farms in the river valleys. Nevada filled a large space on the map as a State of the Union, but the Comstock Lode and afterwards the Sutro tunnel were almost the only reasons for the State and its map.

It was perhaps to be anticipated that one might wish to stay overnight quietly at Austin, after some seventy hours of continuous travel, but no such leisure was possible, for the delay of a day involved the loss of priority for a place in the mail wagon, a consideration of supreme importance. The wagon was ready and the dollar a pound baggage duly packed while the mails were placed under the charge of the driver, the only official for the journey. This conveyance was very like the Cobb's' coaches of Australia; had I not spent several nights in them in South Australia and Victoria? The two horses looked as if they might manage just their share of the work, as they had done so often already. The frame wagon was surmounted by a leather roof, with canvas flaps along each side, arranged for strapping up by day. They were quite needful in these late November nights, at an altitude of four thousand feet or so.

Some falls of rain and snow had relieved us from the fear of a dusty journey; we all knew too well the meaning of dust on a California track. The well-beaten road eastward from Austin had to cross several ranges, which might be classed as mountains but for the appropriation of that name by the Rockies and the Sierra. The United States mail wagon had to get through the passes intersecting these ranges, as they all trend from north to south. The speed of a two-horse conveyance over such a road could not be great; indeed it seemed very leisurely to us, perhaps about six miles an hour. When the halts for change of horses were taken into account, the net progress was little more than one hundred

miles in the twenty-four hours. The whole stage journey of eight hundred miles was timed for seven days. The ranges and the intermediate valleys required about twelve hours from range to range, so that each alternate one was traversed at night. At some time or other during the morning a post-house and coffee was generally reached; the hours of other repasts were even less defined; on one occasion beans and bacon were exceedingly acceptable at two in the morning. The halts too were of irregular length, chiefly governed by the fitness of the relay of horses to take the road. It is of no advantage to record the names of these post stations; they had been usually bestowed by some pioneer with a limited knowledge of the picturesque; they have nearly all been altered as the settlement grew, though even now the Far West is not remarkable for euphonious local designations. But absolutely nothing can be made of Diamond Creek, Grubb's Wells, Ruby Valley or Steptoe crossing, except that most of them indicate the presence of water, the first requisite in the desert. Some of them were hot springs, some were full of alkali, but most were clear and refreshing, though too far apart for comfort on the journey. In company with her husband, Carl Rosa, Madame Parepa Rosa, a noted prima donna of ample dimensions, had travelled by this overland stage a week or two earlier on her way to fulfil an engagement at Salt Lake City. It was said that she booked two seats for herself in the coach and occupied them fully. One of the drivers told me how she had offered him a glass of neat brandy, which he had to refuse when on duty. The journey must have been a very arduous one for her.

Next day after leaving Austin we came to a United States army camp, with a few soldiers quartered close to the post-house. The Goshoot Indians had killed a whole detachment in 1863, but had given no trouble since 1865. According to local estimates there were now not more than sixty of this tribe left. The New Yorker and I found the sitting still for so long intolerable and took to walking on ahead in those first days of the expedition. It may have been venturesome, but we never saw any one on the road; apart from the westward-bound wagon all was solitary. At one post-house we had breakfasted satisfactorily and were just ready to start again, when news came that the parcel post wagon was in difficulties in a cañon near at hand. The horses were all requisitioned, and we had to stay where we were until the newspapers were released. We took an early dinner to fill up the time.

One of these mornings when I took up my usual place to talk to

the driver he pointed out some hills, apparently not very far away, and said that we should be close by those hills in the evening. It was not very encouraging to realise such slow progress, but he explained that all the plain in front of us was an alkali marsh with few exceptions, and was impassable in a direct line. There were mythical stories of a subterranean lake and of the complete disappearance of an ox-wagon. These narratives seem less likely as I am told that most of this plain is now fertile land, yielding crops and pasture. The only method of making good on this road was to circumvent the alkali morass by following the irregular line of the rocky slopes, and this was exactly what the Pony Express had done. Keeping to the hard ground involved a long detour, and almost at once there was a stream, or slough to speak more accurately, where the good surface came to a stop. So did the wagon, as one wheel went down into the white mud. All of us except the women turned out to heave and push, and by degrees lifted the vehicle clear, with much decoration of the horses and ourselves in the shape of alkali mud. Everything was now redolent of this mud, and nothing seemed to matter very much, except to reach the post-house at the end of this twenty-two mile stage, even though we were not to get any drinking-water at this lonely spot. Meantime we came upon the newspaper mail wagon stuck fast in the next creek. So we set to work and unloaded it, then pulled and pushed and lifted, and the wagon was once more a live concern. We finished the job by reloading, as there was no one else within ten miles to do it.

By sunrise next morning the most westerly of the Mormon settlements was in sight, a small farm or two with orchard, all looking bare enough in late November. The stony slopes had been brought under cultivation, though large rocks protruded among the scanty pastures. No wonder that the farmer's people were pinched in appearance, they had such a battle with climate and barren soil. We were now going down a long valley where the lines of hill gradually drew apart, and soon came a wide view over the Great Salt Lake generally supposed to be a remnant of the inland sea once cradled between the ramparts of the Rocky Mountains. Part of the evidence of a higher level of water at some period is tolerably clear, in the lines of raised beaches, fully visible from this south-western end of the Lake Basin. These curious survivals were to be seen high above the present shore. The great expanse of blue, with here and there a black islet and the towering jagged VOL. LXIII.-NO. 373, N.S.

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peaks rising in the background were a sight worth the journey in itself, and the road allowed of a continuous view nearly all the way to the city. Several colonies were passed as we went on, and the plain seemed to be fairly fertile, though evidently the struggle for livelihood had been severe in most places.

As we turned into another valley below snow-capped mountains, Salt Lake City came into sight, white buildings embowered in trees, mainly evergreen, and therefore dark in hue. Soon we were on a wide road fringed with more trees and flanked by channels of running water. It is true that the surface was far from smooth and the houses behind the trees chiefly of one storey only, but so was Buenos Aires, in the main, at that time. New settlements have no need to build high houses, those come later. There was, in fact, only one street in Salt Lake City which had the look of a business centre, but the enormous difficulties that were overcome must be taken into account. Arrived at the coach agency, we had first of all to make sure of places in one of the two vehicles leaving that evening for the Union Pacific railhead. We were enabled to do that, but could not have stayed overnight without losing our claim to priority, and none of us was so charmed with Salt Lake City as to risk that. The largest building in the city was then the Tabernacle, a huge flattened dome capable of holding ten thousand people and having the best acoustic properties. The Temple was planned and the foundations laid occupying a large square in the centre of the city. The design was that of much more ornamental character than the Tabernacle, but nobody could say that it was exactly artistic. In general, the Mormons of that day were agriculturists but nothing more. The professional class came from outside, as did most of the traders. Considering their antecedents and the natural difficulties of the region, they had done all that could be expected of them, yet their city was in those days not much of an affair. They had made irrigation canals all through the adjacent plain, drawing the water、 from their River Jordan, crossed by a trestle bridge on the western road. We got a sight of Brigham Young, their ruler, driving in his two-horse landau, a melancholy-looking man of pale and rather anxious aspect. Nobody took any notice of his passing, not a hat was raised, as far as one could see. His quarters included several large houses, which, like the Tabernacle, were surrounded by high walls. The practice of polygamy was not then very general; it seems to have been found too costly except for those who had assured incomes. The impression formed at the time was that these

communities in Utah had at least as good a claim to State rights as had the State of Nevada, with its bunch of silver mines and nothing besides. It was much later that Utah became a State.

It was a curious epoch in the story of the Mormon community just then. The original settlement had been founded in the Middle West many years earlier, and remained isolated for some time. Then, in order to preserve their identity untainted by any Gentile interference, they plunged into the unknown, separating themselves by a thousand miles of wilderness, peopled by Red Indians, from other pioneer enterprises, and there they remained. Now in 1868 they were invaded on both sides; the railway was coming from the east and from the west, and they had to recognise the impossibility of continuing as an entirely separate community. The United States were swallowing them up. Some of the Mormons had visions of a mountain location southwards, but the majority did not face the prospect of further hardships, coupled with the probability of a fresh invasion by outsiders at no distant date. I do not profess to carry on the history; it will suffice to record what one saw and heard in 1868.

Continuing our eastward journey, the company of fellow passengers from the desert was broken up as the two coaches divided them. I do not call to mind any individualities of our new companions, with one exception. This man was a Jew commercial, travelling always in the Far West. He was a lively, conversational person, doing much to keep up interest in the journey and its occurrences, though he had done it so often. It was quite a relief to meet someone who could make a joke of the inconveniences; some of the time further back had been spent in complaints of weariness and discomfort, which seemed hardly worth while, as they could not be avoided, and there was always the surpassing interest of the extraordinary surroundings. On the hill above Salt Lake City then stood Fort Douglas, garrisoned by United States troops and dominating the settlement completely. Next morning we were traversing an exceedingly mountainous country, chiefly along narrow cañons. In one of them, Echo Cañon, the new railroad track followed the same lines as the road, and the coaches travelled for many miles on the levelled surface mostly, though occasionally it was not available where rock blasting was required. We were still a hundred miles from railhead. Later in the day they were busy with the ties and sleepers, and the coaches had to take to rougher roads. On this part of the journey the Mormon cooking