the mountains toward the lake, but most of them were devoured by
the thirsty sands of the valley before their journey was half
completed.

Such was the scene of desolation that greeted the pioneer band.
A more forsaken spot they had not passed in all their wanderings.
And is this the promised land? This is the very place of which
Bridger spake when he proffered a thousand dollars in gold for
the first bushel of grain that could be raised here. With such a
Canaan spread out before them, was it not wholly pardonable if
some did sigh with longing for the leeks and flesh-pots of the
Egypt they had left, or wished to pass by this land and seek a
fairer home? Two of the three women who belonged to the party
were utterly disappointed. "Weak, worn, and weary as I am," said
one of these heroines, "I would rather push on another thousand
miles than stay here."

But the voice of their leader was heard. "The very place," said
Brigham Young, and in his prophetic mind there rose a vision of
what was to come. Not for a moment did he doubt the future. He
saw a multitude of towns and cities, hamlets and villas filling
this and neighboring valleys, with the fairest of all, a city
whose beauty of situation, whose wealth of resource should become
known throughout the world, rising from the most arid site of the
burning desert before him, hard by the barren salt shores of the
watery waste. There in the very heart of the parched wilderness
should stand the House of the Lord, with other temples in valleys
beyond the horizon of his gaze.

Within a few hours after the arrival of the vanguard upon the