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Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 by Various
page 7 of 136 (05%)
statement by deducting the hours of darkness; yet this is really a
fortunate enhancement of the traveler's enjoyment; it seems providential
that there is one part of the way just long enough and uninteresting
enough to permit one to go to sleep without the fear of missing anything
sublime. Leaving Salt Lake City at noon, we sped through the fertile and
populous Jordan Valley, past the fresh and lovely Utah Lake, and up the
Valley of Spanish Fork. All the way the superb granite walls and summits
of the Wahsatch accompanied us on the east, while westward, across the
wide valley, were the blue outlines of the Oquirrh range. One after
another of the magnificent canons of the Wahsatch we passed, their
mouths seeming mere gashes in the massive rock, but promising wild and
rugged variety to him who enters--a promise which I have abundantly
tested in other days. Parley's Canon, the Big and Little Cottonwood, and
most wonderful of all, the canon of the American Fork, form a series not
inferior to those of Boulder, Clear Creek, the Platte, and the Arkansas,
in the front range of the Rockies.

Following Spanish Fork eastward so far as it served our purpose, we
crossed the divide to the head waters of the South Fork of Price River,
a tributary of Green River. It was a regret to me, in choosing this
route, that I should miss the familiar and beloved scenery of Weber and
Echo canons--the only part of the Union Pacific road which tempts one
to look out of a car window, unless one may be tempted by the boundless
monotony of the plains or the chance of a prairie dog. Great was my
satisfaction, therefore, to find that this part of the new road,
parallel with the Union Pacific, but a hundred miles farther south,
traverses the same belt of rocks, and exhibits them in forms not less
picturesque. Castle Canon, on the South Fork of the Price, is the
equivalent of Echo Canon, and is equal or superior in everything except
color. The brilliant red of the Echo cliffs is wanting. The towers
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