By the Golden Gate | Page 7

Brigham Young; to attend the Saturday afternoon recital on the great
organ, in the Tabernacle, which is oval in shape, and has a roof like a

turtle's back, and where some three thousand people were assembled; to
walk around Temple Square and examine the architecture of the
Mormon Temple, which is like a great Cathedral, and into which no
one is admitted but the specially initiated and privileged among the
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