looking him full in the face, reminded him that, two years after
the assassination of Joseph Smith, the inspired prophet, Brigham Young,
his successor, left Nauvoo for the banks of the Great Salt Lake, where,
in the midst of that fertile region, directly on the route of the emigrants
who crossed Utah on their way to California, the new colony, thanks to
the polygamy practised by the Mormons, had flourished beyond expectations.

"And this," added Elder William Hitch, "this is why the jealousy of Congress
has been aroused against us! Why have the soldiers of the Union invaded
the soil of Utah? Why has Brigham Young, our chief, been imprisoned,
in contempt of all justice? Shall we yield to force? Never!
Driven from Vermont, driven from Illinois, driven from Ohio,
driven from Missouri, driven from Utah, we shall yet find some
independent territory on which to plant our tents. And you,
my brother," continued the Elder, fixing his angry eyes
upon his single auditor, "will you not plant yours there,
too, under the shadow of our flag?"

"No!" replied Passepartout courageously, in his turn retiring
from the car, and leaving the Elder to preach to vacancy.

During the lecture the train had been making good progress,
and towards half-past twelve it reached the northwest border
of the Great Salt Lake. Thence the passengers could observe
the vast extent of this interior sea, which is also called the Dead Sea,
and into which flows an American Jordan. It is a picturesque expanse,
framed in lofty crags in large strata, encrusted with white salt--
a superb sheet of water, which was formerly of larger extent than now,
its shores having encroached with the lapse of time, and thus at once
reduced its breadth and increased its depth.

The Salt Lake, seventy miles long and thirty-five wide,
is situated three miles eight hundred feet above the sea.
Quite different from Lake Asphaltite, whose depression
is twelve hundred feet below the sea, it contains considerable salt,
and one quarter of the weight of its water is solid matter,
its specific weight being 1,170, and, after being distilled, 1,000.
Fishes are, of course, unable to live in it, and those which descend
through the Jordan, the Weber, and other streams soon perish.

The country around the lake was well cultivated, for the Mormons
are mostly farmers; while ranches and pens for domesticated animals,
fields of wheat, corn, and other cereals, luxuriant prairies,
hedges of wild rose, clumps of acacias and milk-wort,
would have been seen six months later. Now the ground
was covered with a thin powdering of snow.

The train reached Ogden at two o'clock, where it rested for six hours,
Mr. Fogg and his party had time to pay a visit to Salt Lake City,
connected with Ogden by a branch road; and they spent two hours
in this strikingly American town, built on the pattern of other cities
of the Union, like a checker-board, "with the sombre sadness of right-angles,"
as Victor Hugo expresses it. The founder of the City of the Saints
could not escape from the taste for symmetry which distinguishes
the Anglo-Saxons. In this strange country, where the people
are certainly not up to the level of their institutions,
everything is done "squarely"--cities, houses, and follies.

The travellers, then, were promenading, at three o'clock,
about the streets of the town built between the banks of the
Jordan and the spurs of the Wahsatch Range. They saw few
or no churches, but the prophet's mansion, the court-house,
and the arsenal, blue-brick houses with verandas and porches,
surrounded by gardens bordered with acacias, palms, and locusts.
A clay and pebble wall, built in 1853, surrounded the town;
and in the principal street were the market and several hotels
adorned with pavilions. The place did not seem thickly populated.
The streets were almost deserted, except in the vicinity of the temple,
which they only reached after having traversed several quarters
surrounded by palisades. There were many women, which was easily
accounted for by the "peculiar institution" of the Mormons;
but it must not be supposed that all the Mormons are polygamists.
They are free to marry or not, as they please; but it is worth noting
that it is mainly the female citizens of Utah who are anxious to marry,
as, according to the Mormon religion, maiden ladies are not admitted
to the possession of its highest joys. These poor creatures seemed
to be neither well off nor happy. Some--the more well-to-do, no doubt--
wore short, open, black silk dresses, under a hood or modest shawl;
others were habited in Indian fashion.

Passepartout could not behold without a certain fright these women,
charged, in groups, with conferring happiness on a single Mormon.
His common sense pitied, above all, the husband. It seemed to him
a terrible thing to have to guide so many wives at once across
the vicissitudes of life, and to conduct them, as it were,
in a body to the Mormon paradise with the prospect of seeing them
in the company of the glorious Smith, who doubtless was the chief ornament
of that delightful place, to all eternity. He felt decidedly repelled
from such a vocation, and he imagined--perhaps he was mistaken--
that the fair ones of Salt Lake City cast rather alarming glances
on his person. Happily, his stay there was but brief. At four the party
found themselves again at the station, took their places in the train,
and the whistle sounded for starting. Just at the moment, however,
that the locomotive wheels began to move, cries of "Stop! stop!" were heard.

Trains, like time and tide, stop for no one. The gentleman
who uttered the cries was evidently a belated Mormon. He was
breathless with running. Happily for him, the station had neither
gates nor barriers. He rushed along the track, jumped on the rear
platform of the train, and fell, exhausted, into one of the seats.


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