The Outer Ranks, Ever Broken, Ever Builded,
Formed A Magnificent Rampart, Sculptured And Corniced Like The Hanging
Wall Of A Bergschrund, And Appeared Hopelessly Insurmountable, However
Easily One Might Ride The Swelling Waves Beyond.
I feasted awhile on
their beauty, watching their coming in from afar like faithful
messengers, to tell their stories one by one; then I turned
reluctantly away, to botanize and wait a calm.
But the calm did not
come that day, nor did I wait long. In an hour or two I was back
again to the same little cove. The waves still sang the old storm
song, and rose in high crystal walls, seemingly hard enough to be cut
in sections, like ice.
Without any definite determination I found myself undressed, as if
some one else had taken me in hand; and while one of the largest waves
was ringing out its message and spending itself on the beach, I ran
out with open arms to the next, ducked beneath its breaking top, and
got myself into right lusty relationship with the brave old lake.
Away I sped in free, glad motion, as if, like a fish, I had been
afloat all my life, now low out of sight in the smooth, glassy
valleys, now bounding aloft on firm combing crests, while the crystal
foam beat against my breast with keen, crisp clashing, as if composed
of pure salt. I bowed to every wave, and each lifted me right royally
to its shoulders, almost setting me erect on my feet, while they all
went speeding by like living creatures, blooming and rejoicing in the
brightness of the day, and chanting the history of their grand
mountain home.
A good deal of nonsense has been written concerning the difficulty of
swimming in this heavy water. "One's head would go down, and heels
come up, and the acrid brine would burn like fire." I was conscious
only of a joyous exhilaration, my limbs seemingly heeding their own
business, without any discomfort or confusion; so much so, that
without previous knowledge my experience on this occasion would not
have led me to detect anything peculiar. In calm weather, however,
the sustaining power of the water might probably be more marked. This
was by far the most exciting and effective wave excursion I ever made
this side of the Rocky Mountains; and when at its close I was heaved
ashore among the sunny grasses and flowers, I found myself a new
creature indeed, and went bounding along the beach with blood all
aglow, reinforced by the best salts of the mountains, and ready for
any race.
Since the completion of the transcontinental and Utah railways, this
magnificent lake in the heart of the continent has become as
accessible as any watering-place on either coast; and I am sure that
thousands of travelers, sick and well, would throng its shores every
summer were its merits but half known. Lake Point is only an hour or
two from the city, and has hotel accommodations and a steamboat for
excursions; and then, besides the bracing waters, the climates is
delightful. The mountains rise into the cool sky furrowed with
canyons almost yosemitic in grandeur, and filled with a glorious
profusion of flowers and trees. Lovers of science, lovers of
wildness, lovers of pure rest will find here more than they may hope
for.
As for the Mormons one meets, however their doctrines be regarded,
they will be found as rich in human kindness as any people in all our
broad land, while the dark memories that cloud their earlier history
will vanish from the mind as completely as when we bathe in the
fountain azure of the Sierra.
IX
Mormon Lilies[11]
Lilies are rare in Utah; so also are their companions the ferns and
orchids, chiefly on account of the fiery saltness of the soil and
climate. You may walk the deserts of the Great Basin in the bloom
time of the year, all the way across from the snowy Sierra to the
snowy Wahsatch, and your eyes will be filled with many a gay malva,
and poppy, and abronia, and cactus, but you may not see a single true
lily, and only a very few liliaceous plants of any kind. Not even in
the cool, fresh glens of the mountains will you find these favorite
flowers, though some of these desert ranges almost rival the Sierra in
height. Nevertheless, in the building and planting of this grand
Territory the lilies were not forgotten. Far back in the dim geologic
ages, when the sediments of the old seas were being gathered and
outspread in smooth sheets like leaves of a book, and when these
sediments became dry land, and were baked and crumbled into the sky as
mountain ranges; when the lava-floods of the Fire Period were being
lavishly poured forth from innumerable rifts and craters; when the ice
of the Glacial Period was laid like a mantle over every mountain and
valley - throughout all these immensely protracted periods, in the
throng of these majestic operations, Nature kept her flower children
in mind. She considered the lilies, and, while planting the plains
with sage and the hills with cedar, she has covered at least one
mountain with golden erythroniums and fritillarias as its crowning
glory, as if willing to show what she could do in the lily line even
here.
Looking southward from the south end of Salt Lake, the two northmost
peaks of the Oquirrh Range are seen swelling calmly into the cool sky
without any marked character, excepting only their snow crowns, and a
few weedy-looking patches of spruce and fir, the simplicity of their
slopes preventing their real loftiness from being appreciated. Gray,
sagey plains circle around their bases, and up to a height of a
thousand feet or more their sides are tinged with purple, which I
afterwards found is produced by a close growth of dwarf oak just
coming into leaf. Higher you may detect faint tintings of green on a
gray ground, from young grasses and sedges; then come the dark pine
woods filling glacial hollows, and over all the smooth crown of snow.
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