across the river, to the right, is the “Devil’s Slide” — two perpendicular walls of rock, looking strangely like man’s handiwork, stretching in parallel lines almost from base to summit of a sloping, grass-covered mountain.  The walls are but a dozen feet apart.  It is a curious phenomenon, but only one among many that are scattered at intervals all through here.  A short distance farther, and I pass the famous “Thousand-mile Tree” — a rugged pine, that stands between the railroad and the river, and which has won renown by springing up just one thousand miles from Omaha.  This tree is having a tough struggle for its life these days; one side of its honored trunk is smitten as with the leprosy.  The fate of the Thousand-mile Tree is plainly sealed.  It is unfortunate in being the most conspicuous target on the line for the fe-ro-ci-ous youth who comes West with a revolver in his pocket and shoots at things from the car-window.  Judging from the amount of cold lead contained in that side of its venerable trunk next the railway few of these thoughtless marksmen go past without honoring it with a shot.  Emerging from “the Narrows” of Weber Canon, the route follows across a less contracted space to Echo City, a place of two hundred and twenty-five inhabitants, mostly Mormons, where I remain over-night.  The hotel where I put up at Echo is all that can be desired, so far as “provender” is concerned; but the handsome and picturesque proprietor seems afflicted with sundry eccentric habits, his leading eccentricity being a haughty contempt for fractional currency.  Not having had the opportunity to test him, it is difficult to say whether this peculiarity works both ways, or only when the change is due his transient guests.  However, we willingly give him the benefit of the doubt.

Heavily freighted rain-clouds are hovering over the mountains next morning and adding to the gloominess of the gorge, which, just east of Echo City, contracts again and proceeds eastward under the name of Echo Gorge.  Turning around a bold rocky projection to the left, the far-famed “Pulpit Rock” towers above, on which Brigham Young is reported to have stood and preached to the Mormon host while halting over Sunday at this point, during their pilgrimage to their new home in the Salt Lake Valley below.  Had the redoubtable prophet turned “dizzy " while haranguing his followers from the elevated pinnacle of his novel pulpit, he would at least have died a more romantic death than he is accredited with — from eating too much green corn.

Fourteen miles farther brings me to “Castle Rocks,” a name given to the high sandstone bluffs that compose the left-hand side of the canon at this point, and which have been worn by the elements into all manner of fantastic shapes, many of them calling to mind the towers and turrets of some old-world castle so vividly, that one needs but the pomp and circumstance of old knight-errant days to complete the illusion.