GREAT SALT LAKE CITY, the capital of the Territory, is situated in Salt Lake County, on the east bank of the river Jordan, which connects Utah Lake with the Great Salt Lake, about 22 miles east of the latter lake, and 4200 feet above the level of the sea. It was laid out in July, 1847. In 1870, it contained a population of about 17,000. William Hepworth Dixon thus sketches the city:

"The site of the new city was laid between the two great lakes, Utah Lake and Salt Lake,—like the town of Interlachen, between Brienz and Thun, though the distances are here much greater, the two inland seas of Utah being real seas when compared against the two charming lakelets in the Bernese Alps. A river, now called the Jordan, flows from Utah into Salt Lake; but it skirts the town only, and, lying low down in the valley, is useless, as yet, for irrigation. Young has a plan for constructing a canal from Utah Lake to the city, by way of the lower benches of the Wasatch chain; a plan which will cost much money, and fertilize enormous sweeps of barren soil. If Salt Lake City is left to extend itself in peace, the canal will soon be dug; and the bench, now covered with stones, with sand, and a little wild sage, will be changed into vineyards and gardens. The city, which covers, we are told, three thousand acres of land, between the mountains and the river, is laid out in blocks of ten acres each. Each block is divided into lots of one acre and a quarter; this quantity of land being considered enough for an ordinary cottage and garden.

"As yet, the temple is unbuilt; the foundations are well laid, of massive granite; and the work is of a kind that bids fair to last; but the Temple block is covered with temporary buildings and erectionsthe old tabernacle, the great bowery, the new tabernacle, the temple foundations. A high wall encloses these edifices; a poor wall, without art, without strength; more like a mud wall than the great work which surrounds the temple platform on Moriah. When the works are finished, the enclosure will be trimmed and planted, so as to offer shady walks and a garden of flowers.

"The Temple block gives form to the whole city. From each side of it starts a street, a hundred feet in width, going out on the level plain, and in straight lines into space. Streets of the same width, and parallel to these, run north and south, east and west; each planted with locust and ailantus trees, cooled by two running streams of water from the hill-side. These streets go up north, towards the bench, and nothing but the lack of people prevents them from travelling onward,

south and west, to the lakes, which they already reach on paper, and in the imagination of the more fervid saints. Main street runs along the temple front; a street of offices, of residences, and of trade. Originally, it was meant for a street of the highest rank, and bore the name of East Temple street; upon it stood, besides the temple itself, the Council house, the Tithing office, the dwellings of Young, Kimball, Wells, the three chief officers of the Mormon Church. It was once amply watered and nobly planted; but commerce has invaded the precincts of the modern temple, as it invaded those of the old; and the power of Brigham Young has broken and retreated before that of the money-dealers and the venders of meat and raiment. Banks, stores, offices, hotels,—all the conveniences of modern life,—are springing up in Main street; trees have, in many parts, been cut down for the sake of loading and unloading goods; the trim little gardens, full of peach trees and apple trees, bowering the adobe cottages in their midst, have given way to shop-fronts and to hucksters' stalls. In the business portion, Main street is wide, dusty, unpaved, unbuilt; a street showing the three stages through which every American city has to pass: the log shanty, the adobe cot (in places where clay and fuel can be easily obtained, this stage is one of brick), and the stone house. Many of the best houses are still of wood; more are of adobe, the sun-dried bricks once used in Babylonia and Egypt, and still used everywhere in Mexico and California; a few are of red stone, and even granite. The temple is being built of granite from a neighboring hill. The Council house is of red stone, as are many of the great magazines, such as Godbe's, Jennings', Gilbert's, Clawson's; magazines in which you find everything for sale, as in a Turkish bazaar, from candles and champagne, down to gold dust, cotton prints, tea, pen-knives, canned meats, and mouse-traps. The smaller shops, the ice cream houses, the saddlers, the barbers, the restaurants, the hotels, and all the better class of dwellings, are of sun-dried bricks; a good material in this dry and sunny climate; bright to the eye, cosy in winter, cool in summer; though such houses are apt to crumble away in a shower of rain. A few shanties, remnants of the first emigation, still remain in sight. Lower down, towards the south, where the street runs off into infinite space, the locust and ailantus trees reappear.

"In its busy, central portion, nothing hints the difference between Main street in Salt Lake City, and the chief thoroughfare, say, of Kansas, Leavenworth, and Denver, except the absence of grog-shops, lager beer saloons, and bars. The hotels have no bars, the streets

have no betting-houses, no gaming-tables, no brothels, no drinkingplaces. In my hotel- The Salt Lake'-kept by Colonel Little, one of the Mormon elders, I cannot buy a glass of beer, a flask of wine. No house is now open for the sale of drink (though the Gentiles swear they will have one open in a few weeks), and the table of the hotel is served at morning, noon, and night, with tea. In this absence of public solicitation to sip either claret-cobbler, whiskey-bourbon, Tom and Jerry; mint-julep, eye-opener, fix-up, or any other Yankee deception in the shape of liquor-the city is certainly very much unlike Leavenworth and the River towns, where every third house in a street appears to be a drinking den. Going past the business quarter, we return to the first ideas of Young in planting his new home; the familiar lines of acacias grow by the becks; the cottages stand back from the road-side twenty or thirty feet; the peach trees, apple trees, and vines, tricked out with roses and sun-flowers, smother up the roofs.

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"Right and left from Main street, crossing it, parallel to it, lie a multitude of streets, each like its fellow; a hard,,dusty road, with tiny becks, and rows of locust, cotton-wood, and philarea, and the building-land laid down in blocks. In each block stands a cottage, in the midst of fruit trees. Some of these houses are of goodly appearance as to size and style, and would let for high rentals in the Isle of Wight. Others are mere cots of four or five rooms, in which the polygamous families, should they ever quarrel, would find it difficult to form a ring and fight. In some of these orchards you' see two, three houses; pretty Swiss cottages, like many in St. John's Wood, as to gable, roof, and paint: these are the dwellings of different wives. Whose houses are these?' we ask a lad in East Temple street, pointing to some pretty-looking villas. "They belong,' said he, to brother Kimball's family.' Here, on the bench, in the highest part of the city, is Elder Hiram Clawson's garden ; a lovely garden, red with delicious peaches, plums, and apples, on which, through the kindness of his youngest wife, we have been hospitably fed during our sojourn with the Saints; a large house stands in front, in which live his first and second wives, with their nurseries of twenty children. But what is yon dainty white bower in the corner, with its little gate and its smother of roses and creepers? That is the house of the youngest wife, Alice, a daughter of Brigham Young. She has a nest of her own, apart from the other women,-a nest in which she lives with her four little boys, and where she is supposed to have as much of her own way with her lord as the daughter of a Sultan enjoys in the