where it shows, is pebbly; a white, chalky incrustation covers the shallower bottom; shells, especially the fresh-water clam, are numerous upon the watery margin; the flaggy "Deserét weed" in the tulares is ten feet high,[1] and thicket is dense in places where rock does not occupy the soil. The western side is arid for want of influents; there is a "lone tree," a solitary cotton-wood, conspicuous amid the grazing-ground of bunch-grass, sage, and greasewood, and the only inhabitants, excepting a single ranch—Evan's—are, apparently, the Phrynosoma and the lizard, the raven and the jackass-rabbit. The Utah Lake freezes in December, January, and February. At these months the Jordan rolls down floes of ice, but it is seldom to be traversed on foot. In the flood season it rises two, and the wind tide extends to about three feet. It is still full of fish, which in former times were carried off in barrels. The white trout weigh thirty pounds. There are many kinds of mountain trout averaging three pounds, while salmon trout, suckers, and mudfish are uncommonly large and plentiful; water-snakes and "horsehair fish" are also found.
After descending the steep incline we forded the Jordan, at that point 100 feet broad, and deep to the wagon-hubs. The current was not too swift to prevent the growth of weeds. The water was of sulphury color, the effect of chalk, and the taste was brackish, but not unpleasant; cattle are said to like it. The fording was followed by a long ascent, the divide between Utah Valley and its western neighbor Cedar Valley. About half way between the Brewery and the Camp is a station, held by a Shropshire Mormon, whose only name, as far as I could discover, was Joe Dugout, so called, like the Watertons de Waterton, from the style of his habitation. He had married a young woman, who deterred him from giving her a sister—every Oriental language has a word to express what in English, which lacks the thing, is rudely translated "a rival wife"—by threatening to have his ears cut off by the "horfficers." Joe, however, seemed quite resigned to the pains and penalties of monogamy, and, what was more to our purpose, had a good brew of porter and Lager-bier.
Having passed on the way a road that branches off to the old camp, which was deserted for want of water, we sighted from afar the new cantonment. It lies in a circular basin, surrounded by irregular hills of various height, still wooded with black cedar, where not easily felled, and clustering upon the banks of Cedar Creek, a rivulet which presently sinks in a black puddly mud. For a more thoroughly detestable spot one must repair to Gharra, or some similar purgatorial place in Lower Sindh. The winter is long and rigorous, the summer hot and uncomfortable, the alkaline water curdles soap, and the dust-storms remind one of the
- ↑ Tulare is a marsh of bulrush (Scirpus lacustris), which is found extending over immense tracts of river valley in Western America. "Tooly" water, as it is pronounced, is that which is flavored or tainted by it.
