Around the World on a Bicycle - Volume 1 - From San Francisco to Teheran by Thomas Stevens
page 62 of 572 (10%)
page 62 of 572 (10%)
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side of its venerable trunk next the railway few of these thoughtless
marksmen go past without honoring it with a shot. Emerging from "the Narrows" of Weber Canon, the route follows across a less contracted space to Echo City, a place of two hundred and twenty-five inhabitants, mostly Mormons, where I remain over-night. The hotel where I put up at Echo is all that can be desired, so far as "provender" is concerned; but the handsome and picturesque proprietor seems afflicted with sundry eccentric habits, his leading eccentricity being a haughty contempt for fractional currency. Not having had the opportunity to test him, it is difficult to say whether this peculiarity works both ways, or only when the change is due his transient guests. However, we willingly give him the benefit of the doubt. Heavily freighted rain-clouds are hovering over the mountains next morning and adding to the gloominess of the gorge, which, just east of Echo City, contracts again and proceeds eastward under the name of Echo Gorge. Turning around a bold rocky projection to the left, the far-famed "Pulpit Rock" towers above, on which Brigham Young is reported to have stood and preached to the Mormon host while halting over Sunday at this point, during their pilgrimage to their new home in the Salt Lake Valley below. Had the redoubtable prophet turned "dizzy " while haranguing his followers from the elevated pinnacle of his novel pulpit, he would at least have died a more romantic death than he is accredited with - from eating too much green corn. Fourteen miles farther brings me to "Castle Rocks," a name given to the high sandstone bluffs that compose the left-hand side of the canon at this point, and which have been worn by the elements into all manner of fantastic shapes, many of them calling to mind the towers and turrets of some old-world castle so vividly, that one needs but the pomp and |
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