By the Golden Gate | Page 7

Latter-day Saints; to visit many buildings famous in Mormon history, and especially "Zion's Co-operative Mutual Institute," which, in its initials has been said wittily to mean, "Zion's Children Multiply Incessantly;" and on Sunday morning to attend the beautiful service in St. Mark's Church, where Bishop Tuttle, of Missouri, preached a striking sermon from the text "A horse is counted but a vain thing to save a man;" and in the evening to participate in the grand missionary service in Salt Lake Theatre, where the congregation was led by a choir of sixty voices, and stirring addresses were made by Bishop Leonard of Salt Lake, Bishop Gailor of Tennessee, Bishop Jacob, of Newcastle, England, Bishop Dudley, of Kentucky, and Bishop Tuttle, who was formerly Bishop here, before an audience of four thousand people, made up, as the Bishop said, of "Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Hebrews, Latter-Day Saints and Churchmen."
What I saw and heard here in Salt Lake City and in other parts of Utah would make a book of itself, but I may say that the only place in which to study Mormonism in all its workings is here in its seat. While polygamy must drop out of the system owing to the laws of the United States, the religious elements will not so soon perish. It has enough of Christianity in it to give it a certain stability like Mohammedanism; but we believe that the Church of the Living God will sooner or later triumph over all forms and teachings which are antagonistic to the Christian Creeds and Apostolic Order. I visited a Mormon bookstore, among other places, and I was amazed at the number of volumes which I found here on the religion of the Latter-Day Saints. In a history of Mormonism, which I opened, was this pregnant sentence--"The pernicious tendency of Luther's doctrine." Surely here is something for reflection!
From Salt Lake City to Ogden, the great centre of railway travel, where several lines converge, is but a ride of thirty-six miles. Here the train, which was very heavy, was divided into two sections, and, after some delay, we went on our journey with hopeful hearts. The Salt Lake Valley and the Great Salt Lake, which we had traced for a long distance, finally disappeared from view. The journey was begun from Ogden on what is known as Pacific time. There are four time sections employed in the United States, adopted for convenience in 1883,--Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific. It is Eastern time until you reach 82-1/2 degrees west longitude from Greenwich, Central time up to 97-1/2, Mountain time till you arrive at 11-1/2, Pacific time to 127-1/2, which will take you out into the Pacific Ocean; and there is just one hour's difference between each time section, covering fifteen degrees. So that when it is twelve o'clock, midday, in New York city, it is eleven in Chicago, ten o'clock in Denver, and nine o'clock in San Francisco. You adapt yourself, however, very readily to these changes of time, in your hours of sleep and in other matters.
One of the places of special interest through which we passed before leaving Utah is Promontory. Here the last tie was laid and here the last spike was driven, on the 10th of May, 1869, when the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railways were united and the great cities of the Atlantic seaboard and San Francisco at the setting sun were brought into communication with each other by an iron way which has promoted our civilisation in a marked degree. A night ride over the Alkali Plains of Nevada, famous for their sage brush, was a novelty, and in the clear atmosphere they looked like fields of snow.
At Wadsworth, where our train began to ascend the lower slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, were several Piute Indians. They sell beads, blankets, baskets, and other mementoes. A papoose, all done up in swathing bands, aroused no little curiosity, and when some venturesome passenger with a kodak tried to take a picture of the infant, the mother quickly turned away. They think that the kodak is "the evil eye." There was an old squaw here with whom I conversed, who had a remarkable face on account of its wrinkled condition. She said her name was Marie Martile, and at first she said she was one hundred years old, and later that she was one hundred and fifty. At Reno I saw more Indians with papooses. The thought, however, that this old race is passing away like the fading leaf before the "pale face," is saddening. Soon we arrive in the El Dorado State, we are at last on California soil, and the train with panting engines climbs the dizzy heights of the Sierras, through beautiful forests, along the slopes of hills, through tunnels, beneath