We have some picturesque views here which will help us in some degree to understand what this valley or basin is like. It is by no means uniform in its features, but presents almost infinite variety of physical aspect, and is at present the scene of some of the strangest developments in human character and history.

THE PRESIDENT: Will Dr. Paulus mention some of the special geological and physical features of this Basin?

DR. PAULUS: I presume you refer to the peculiarity that it is what I may term self-drained. None of its rivers seem to have any outlet towards the sea. The region, however, abounds in lakes, in some of which the water is salt. These lakes

receive the rivers, but in consequence of the little rainfall and the great evaporation they rarely have any outlet-the Great Salt Lake, for instance; or, if they have, the stream is usually soon absorbed in the earth.

JOHN I understand that this region, though comparatively depressed, is an elevated plateau, with ranges of hills running through it, generally north and south.

DR. PAULUS: Yes, and these hills are of a volcanic origin, treeless, and rain is gradually washing their substance down into the valleys. But enough of these preliminaries. That portion of this Great Basin we are now entering is very peculiar, and to the eye unattractive. It is termed the Great American Desert, and is applied especially to a tract of land some seventy to one hundred miles square,

though of very irregular outline, and apparently utterly profitless and barren, both in an agricultural and mineral sense. In traveling through this region the eye sees only bare, brown hills and plains, covered with sand and alkali, with a thin growth of sage-bush, and grass. There is no water visible. Special trains convey this necessary commodity daily to the different stations along the railroad. In wet weather the soil becomes like mortar, and traveling, except by the railroad,

is well nigh impossible.

LILIAN: Does sage grow out in this desert? I should think that there must be good soil in it somewhere.

THE PRESIDENT: It is not the garden sage, nor anything like it. The

bush is a species of Artemisia, the wormwood

group of the order Composita. It seems indigenous to these dry alkaline soils, and as it is a shrubby plant, it makes good fire-wood in these regions.

DR. PAULUS: We are now entering, if you please, the confines of Utah territory.

GRACE: The land of

Blue-beards.

DR. PAULUS: Most of

CORINNA.

The sage

it, unfortunately, is held by the Mormons; but they will not interfere with us, though we may have a little to say about them by and by. Here is Corinna, not a Mormon town, though in Utah.

KATE: It does not look much of a place.

DR. PAULUS: No, nor very picturesque; but it is a specimen of a frontier city, and has a large trade with the great mining regions of this great Basin. At Ogden City we leave the Union Pacific for the Utah railroad for Salt Lake City. But before going there, I wish you to look at some beautiful views

of Utah scenery, after which we shall have something to say about Mor

mass of dark red sandstone, some eight hundred feet high. Up the side of this,

from base to summit, runs a stratum of white limestone consisting of a smooth floor about fifteen feet wide, on either side of which is a wall varying from ten to thirty feet in height. As seen from the railroad it resembles a huge mass of masonry, and it is very difficult to discover by what natural agency it has been produced.

Some five years ago a celebrated artist visited some of the most picturesque portions of Utah, and painted some remarkably beautiful pictures. Amongst other places he sketched was Moore's Lake, of which I am able to give you an engraving. This lake is eleven thousand feet above the sea level. It is about nine miles in circumference. It lies about sixty miles south of the railroad among the Uintah Mountains. The water of this lake, as might be supposed from its altitude, is always very cool. It is generally thought that this region has been the center of great glacial rivers. Around the shores of Moore's Lake the mountains rise abruptly to a height of three thousand feet and more, and from the top of one of them there is a view on a clear day of over twelve thousand square miles. There is abundance of timber and very fine pasturage. The lake evidently gets its supply from the melting snows. We are now in the region of cañonsTHE PRESIDENT: Pardon me for a moment. Miss Laura, what is the derivation of the word cañon?

LAURA: I looked that up, and also the word butte, which is used to describe the high, pinnacle-like, isolated peaks common in this western mountain scenery. Cañon is from the Spanish, pronounced canyon, and signifies originally a tube or pipe to carry off water. We use it in this country to designate the deep, mountain, rocky rifts or ravines, with precipitous sides, which are so numerous and also so grand and beautiful in our mountain regions.

THE PRESIDENT: And "butte?"

LAURA: Butte is from the French, and means a high, bold hill. It is pronounced, I suppose, as one syllable, and the "u" should be short.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

DR. PAULUS: One of our illustrations is of Springville Cañon, which is in the Wahsatch range, directly on the verge of the Great Basin. It certainly gives one an idea of loneliness and desolation, though of grandeur likewise. This cañon is not far from a Mormon town of the same name, on the southeast border of Utah