at the summit I pause to take a view at the lake and surrounding country.
A more auspicious occasion could scarcely have been presented. The storm
has subsided, and far beneath my feet a magnificent rainbow spans the
plain, and dips one end of its variegated beauty in the sky-blue waters
of the lake. From this point the view to the west and south is truly
grand-rugged, irregular mountain-chains traverse the country at every
conceivable angle, and around among them winds the lake, filling with
its blue waters the intervening spaces, and reflecting, impartially
alike, their grand majestic beauty and their faults. What dreams of
empire and white-winged commerce on this inland sea must fill the mind
and fire the imagery of the newly arrived Mormon convert who, standing
on the commanding summit of these mountains, feasts his eyes on the
glorious panorama of blue water and rugged mountains that is spread like
a wondrous picture before him. Surely, if he be devotionally inclined,
it fails not to recall to his mind another inland sea in far-off Asia
Minor, on whose pebbly shores and by whose rippling waves the cradle of
an older religion than Morrnonism was rocked - but not rocked to sleep.

Ten miles farther on, from the vantage-ground of a pass over another
spur of the same range, is obtained a widely extended view of the country
to the east. For nearly thirty miles from the base of the mountains,
low, level mud-flats extend eastward, bordered on the south by the marshy,
sinuous shores of the lake, and on the north by the Blue Creek Mountains.
Thirty miles to the east - looking from this distance strangely like flocks
of sheep grazing at the base of the mountains - can be seen the white-
painted houses of the Mormon settlements, that thickly dot the narrow
but fertile strip of agricultural land, between Bear River and the mighty
Wahsatch Mountains, that, rearing their snowy crest skyward, shut out
all view of what lies beyond. From this height the level mud-flats appear
as if one could mount his wheel and bowl across at a ten-mile pace; but