Yellowstone and the Great West: Journals, Letters, and Images from the 1871 Hayden Expedition

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Mr. Adams, who accompanied me to this city, and myself sallied from the Townsend House after breakfast to see this world renowned city. It has often been described, and a repetition would be useless. The features which first attract the attention of strangers, and which can never fail greatly to interest and please, are the great breadth of the streets and the ever flowing rivulets which sparkle along their sides. The streets are well graded and graveled and make excellent drives for carriages, while the mountain streams convey everywhere abundant supplies of water dispersing fertility and life and imparting to the atmosphere a delightsome sense of refreshing coolness.

Our first point was the Tabernacle.¹ We are admitted to the walled enclosure, and by applying at the office were politely attended by the person in charge who seemed happy to answer our main inquiries.

The Tabernacle is the great place of Convocation for the Mormons. It is a plain structure of peculiar form, huge proportions -- an immense ellipse -- the chief axes of which are 250 and 200 feet. Its roof is of shingle, an elliptical dome -- looking for all the world like the cover to a soup dish.

Its form makes it a complete whispering gallery, and the speaker near one end, it is said, can be heard distinctly in any part of the house.

At the extreme next end is the organ -- an immense affair now in process of building by Mormon artisans. The case is completed showing heavy ornamentation of carved work. Many additional sets of pipes are yet to be made.

Everything else about the budding is vividly plain -- paint even being discarded. On either side of the organ are the seats for the singers. In front

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