The army moved slowly forward during the progress of these negotiations.  In Echo Canon, it had an opportunity to inspect the bugbear of the previous autumn,—­the Mormon fortifications.  As the canon—­which is more than twenty miles long—­approaches the Weber River, it dwindles in width from five or six hundred yards to as many feet.  Its northern side becomes a perfect wall of rock, which rises perpendicularly to the height of several hundred feet above the road.  The southern side retains the character of a steep mountain-slope covered with grass and stunted bushes.  Echo Creek, a narrow streamlet, with its dense fringe of willows, fills the whole bottom between the road and the bluffs.  The first indication of approach to the fortifications was the sight of piles of stones heaped into walls four or five feet high, pierced with loopholes, and visible on every projecting point of the cliffs along the northern side, from most of which a pebble could be snapped down upon the road.  Just beyond, after turning a bend in the canon, all the willows along the creek had been cut away, and through the cleared space a ditch five or six feet wide and ten feet deep was dug across the bottom.  The dirt thrown from it was packed so as to form an embankment, on which logs were so arranged that it would answer for a breastwork, behind which riflemen could be posted under cover.  At intervals of about a hundred yards were two similar lines of ditch and breastwork, by the first of which the road was forced to skirt the very base of a cliff which had probably been mined.  The other line was constructed just above the mouths of two narrow gorges which enter the canon, nearly opposite one another, from the north and south.  By the aid of these dams the canon might possibly have been overflowed for half a mile to the depth of several feet, but the water would have accumulated slowly on account of the insignificant size of the creek.  Several dirt walls stretched also across the gorges, commanding the whole of the fortifications below.  This whole system of defences possessed as little strength as merit.  It served only to confirm the impression, which by this time had become general, that the capacity of the Mormons to resist the army had been greatly overrated, and that a vigorous effort to penetrate to the Valley early in the spring would inevitably have succeeded.

For nearly a mile beyond the two gorges, a chain of low hills, over which the road runs, extends below the loftier summits on the southern side of the canon.  The northern side becomes, in consequence, a deep glen, as the cliffs which form its wall rise abruptly from the level of the creek.  This glen is filled with bushes, and in it, thus protected from the wind, the Mormon militia had their winter-quarters.  The huts they occupied had been constructed by digging circular holes in the ground, over which were piled boughs in the same manner as the poles of an Indian lodge.  Around these boughs willow-twigs were plaited,