We find it vain to depict by our feeble word-painting the many-hued, many-voiced phases nature assumes in this almost boundless domain, and the yet untold, undeveloped depths of our territorial resources.  Mountains looming up in imperial grandeur, their snow-crowned summits melting into cloud and sky; weird canons, in which the whispered words of worship from a myriad devotees seem to echo and re-echo through their dark depths; giant trees: 

    “The murmuring pines and hemlock,
    Bearded with moss and in garments of green,
    Indistinct in the twilight,
    Stand like Druids of Eld,
    With voices sad and prophetic.”

Among the many military posts Fort Bridger, named for the famous trapper and guide of oft-written and oft-told fame, is also renowned as one of the posts of our gallant frontier officer, Albert Sydney Johnston, who won his first laurels amid the first Mormon troubles, and gallantly fell at Shiloh early in the Civil War.

Many of the most romantic places have been named for some fair maiden of the pioneer families, as Maggie’s Creek, Susan’s Valley, etc., while one of the most noted and poetic spots is known as “The Maiden’s Grave,” the once rude resting place of a gentle girl, whose remains were left there by her mourning friends on their way to their home on the Pacific Slope.  It was afterwards found by a party of graders on the railway, and these rough but sympathetic men erected a fitting mausoleum of solid masonry, surmounted by a pure white cross of stone, whose symmetrical proportions are prominently visible to every traveler upon the Union Pacific Railroad.

One of the most interesting objects to me was the “Thousand Mile Tree,” whose towering height I could imagine and long to behold as described to me by my companion and friend, its strange isolation sending a peculiar thrill of loneliness through the heart of one who was fifteen hundred miles from home.  This old tree, through some strange freak of nature, stood a solitary sentinel, a guide-post of nature to tell the traveler he was a thousand miles from Omaha.

As we neared Weber River our well known and popular conductor came into the cars, and in a voice of deep, rich melody, sang the words of the then favorite song: 

    “Yes, we will gather at the river. 
    The beautiful, the beautiful river;
    Gather with the Saints at the river,
    That flows by the throne of God.”

The passengers, as we neared the kingdom of the Saints, catching the magnetism of his song, joined in the sweet refrain until it swelled into a soaring, reverberating harmony.

We reached Ogden City just as the sun was setting in royal hues, and repaired at once to the White House, the only gentile hotel in the place.

CHAPTER XXVI.

    “Westward the star of Empire takes its way;
      The four first acts already past,
    A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
      Time’s noblest offspring-is the last.”