SALT LAKE CITY.
ONCE upon a time" there dwelt in Nauvoo a man whose name was Brigham Young. Tribulations numberless surrounded him and his Saints: the chosen and peculiar people of our latter days. They were in the midst of a generation which knew not Joseph Smith. And it then came to pass that Brigham had a vision. He had wandered far away into an inhospitable wilderness—a region of mountains and deserts, of savages and alkali. Suddenly before him rose a majestic peak—a peak of singular conformation, its summit rounded and leaning forward like the full crest of an ocean wave. As the dreamer surveyed the scene, the heavens above the mountain were opened, and a mighty Star-Spangled Banner appeared; it floated through the air with stately grace until it alighted on the mountain-top, when a voice from heaven spoke in our dear Anglo-Saxon tongue: "Build your city at the foot of this mountain, and you shall have prosperity and rest."
The trials and perturbations of the Saints became too mighty to be borne. They were driven from their homes across the Missouri River, marking their route from Nauvoo to Council Bluffs with the graves of those whom famine and exposure had caused to perish by the way. Then it was that Brigham Young, the undismayed leader of the straggling host, announced his reception of the heavenly vision. Said he to his well-nigh disheartened followers: "Somewhere in the unknown and undiscovered West; somewhere in the bosom of the far-off mountains of Mexico, there remaineth prosperity and a rest for the people of God."
He put himself at the head of 143 stalwart men, with a few women to cook, and nurse the sick, and set forth to the unknown occident to search for the mountain of his dream. For months they continued their weary journey: fording unknown rivers, pulling their wagons with ropes through well-nigh impassable cañons, until they had traveled twelve hundred miles from Council Bluffs. Through a narrow defile in the Wahsatch Mountains they entered the valley of the Great Salt Lake, and immediately beside them rose a mountain which Brigham at once designated as the scene of his prophetic dream. In remembrance of the flag which had descended upon it, it was christened "Ensign Peak," which name it bears to the present day. The work of building the city was commenced on the very day of their arrival, July 24th, 1347, and the sacred mountain to-day looks kindly down upon a city of 20,000 people nestling at its foot.
Such, O reader! is the tale which you would hear from Brigham Young or any of his principal subordinates to-day, were you to interrogate them as to the cause of their location in their Happy Valley. But it will be difficult for you, if you are not also a professional writer for the press, to realize the relish and gusto with which we have penned this legend. "We live," in the touching words of another, "in a practical age." Commerce is King. The past has its abounding wealth of legendary lore, from which are built the poems, and prophecies, and romances of to-day. Trade and its necessities dictate where shall be built the commercial centres of the world. It need not be demonstrated that all the great cities of our day owe their importance to some base worldly advan-
