innocence; and when we consider that most of the parents have been
drawn from the thickly settled portion of the Old World, where they
have long suffered the repression of hunger and hard toil, the Mormon
children, "Utah's best crop," seem remarkably bright and promising.

From children one passes naturally into the blooming wilderness, to
the pure religion of sunshine and snow, where all the good and the
evil of this strange people lifts and vanishes from the mind like mist
from the mountains.



VII

A Great Storm in Utah[9]


Utah has just been blessed with one of the grandest storms I have ever
beheld this side of the Sierra. The mountains are laden with fresh
snow; wild streams are swelling and booming adown the canyons, and out
in the valley of the Jordan a thousand rain-pools are gleaming in the
sun.

With reference to the development of fertile storms bearing snow and
rain, the greater portion of the calendar springtime of Utah has been
winter. In all the upper canyons of the mountains the snow is now
from five to ten feet deep or more, and most of it has fallen since
March. Almost every other day during the last three weeks small local
storms have been falling on the Wahsatch and Oquirrh Mountains, while
the Jordan Valley remained dry and sun-filled. But on the afternoon