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The mountains rise grandly round about this
curious city, the Zion of
the new Saints, so grandly that the city itself is hardly visible. The
Wahsatch Range, snow-laden and adorned with glacier-sculpted peaks,
stretches continuously along the eastern horizon, forming the boundary of
the Great Salt Lake Basin; while across the valley of the Jordan
southwestward from here, you behold the Oquirrh Range, about as snowy and
lofty as the Wahsatch. To the northwest your eye skims the blue levels of
the great lake, out of the midst of which rise island
mountains, and beyond, at a distance of fifty miles, is seen the
picturesque wall of the lakeside mountains blending with the lake and
the sky.
The glacial developments of these superb ranges are sharply sculptured
peaks and crests, with ample wombs between them where the ancient
snows of the glacial period were collected and transformed into ice,
and ranks of profound shadowy canyons, while moraines commensurate
with the lofty fountains extend into the valleys, forming far the grandest
series of glacial monuments I have yet seen this side of the Sierra.
In beginning this letter I meant to describe
the city, but in the company of these noble old mountains, it is not easy
to bend one's attention upon anything else. Salt Lake cannot be called a
very beautiful town, neither is there anything ugly or repulsive about it.
From the slopes of the Wahsatch foothills, or old lake benches, toward
Fort Douglas it is seen to occupy the sloping gravelly delta of City
Creek, a fine, hearty stream that comes pouring from the snows of the
mountains through a majestic glacial canyon; and it is just where this
stream comes forth into the light on the edge of the valley of the Jordan
that the
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