Only in a desert such as these men had described the Salt Lake Valley to be could they hope for peace.

From Fort Bridger, then, their route bent to the southwest along the rocky spurs of the Uintah Mountains, whose snow-clad tops gleamed a bluish white in the July sun.
By the middle of July the vanguard of the company began the descent of Echo Canon,--a narrow slit cut straight down a thousand feet into the red sandstone,--the pass which a handful of them was to hold a few years later against a whole army of the hated Gentiles.
The hardest part of their journey was still before them.

Their road had now to be made as they went, lying wholly among the mountains.

Lofty hills, deep ravines with jagged sides, forbidding canons, all but impassable streams, rock-bound and brush-choked,--up and down, through or over all these obstacles they had now to force a passage, cutting here, digging there; now double-locking the wheels of their wagons to prevent their crashing down some steep incline; now putting five teams to one load to haul it up the rock-strewn side of some water-way.
From Echo Canon they went down the Weber, then toward East Canon, a dozen of the bearded host going forward with spades and axes as sappers.
Sometimes they made a mile in five hours; sometimes they were less lucky.

But at length they were fighting their way up the choked East Canon, starting fierce gray wolves from their lairs in the rocks and hearing at every rod of their hard-fought way the swift and unnerving song of the coiled rattlesnake.
Eight fearful miles they toiled through this gash in the mountain; then over another summit,--Big Mountain; down this dangerous slide, all wheels double-locked, on to the summit of another lofty hill,--Little Mountain; and abruptly down again into the rocky gorge afterwards to become historic as Immigration Canon.
Following down this gorge, never doubting they should come at last to their haven, they found its mouth to be impassable.