Salt Lake City, Utah. Aug[ust] 8 [18]77
Dearest Hyacinth*1 I last wrote from George town, on the 5th, and posted the letter that night at Denver. After changing my plants &c, on that night and turning in, I was roused up at midnight by Prof[essor] Hayden*2 who brought me letters from Willy*3, Dyer*4, (including one from Harriet*4) Mrs Hodgson and Sir J. Colville5, (about Hodgson's settlements) but none from you! I was consoled by expecting one from you at Cheyenne next day, whither we were to go to take the Union Pacific rail for Ogden, en route for this place, but on arrival there no letters were to be found. So I must be content to wait till I get to San Francisco a fortnight hence where, (if your letters to me are not altogether lost) I may hope to get them. We were two days and a night on the rail coming here, over the bare low ranges of the Rocky M[ountain]s; sometimes we went for miles over black granite mountain tops, or over plains covered with short grass and bushes of wormwood &c., or through Rocky Cañons, or over "Bad Lands" -- desolate regions where the ground is full of salt and there is very little vegetation. After several hundred miles of this country, which varied from 6000 to 8000ft above the sea, we descended to the immense broad valley of the Salt Lake, which is the domain of the Mormons, in the State of Utah. Here they settled in 1847 when driven out of the United States and when Utah belonged to Mexico. In 1848, after the U. S. war with Mexico, the latter surrendered Utah to the U.S., but the Gov[ernmen]t. did not interfere with this out of the way

territory till lately, when mines, railroads and civilization pushed across the Continent. Then many Gentiles bought land in Utah, Gold, Silver, Lead and Copper mines were opened and Utah became one of the territories of the States with a Governor appointed by the States. Meanwhile the U.S. does not interfere with the religion or education of the people, the mass of whom are Mormons, possessing unbounded faith in the spiritual head, Brigham Young, (the successor of Joe Smith) giving him a tithe of their goods annually and accepting his rule in all things spiritual. The City of 30,000 inhabitants, occupies a flat area of several miles, not far from the Lake, and the whole neighbourhood, for 36 miles around, is peopled by Mormons. They are an agricultural and pastoral people, very simple, cleanly, quiet and industrious, prosperous though not rich, well disposed and orderly; -- peace and plenty and prosperity are conspicuous everywhere, and there is nothing but these qualities to distinguish them from any other city of the kind in America. Few have more than one wife; our landlord, who has been 25 years here and is a very wealthy man, has (or is said to have) three -- one for general managing, another for managing the housemaid's department and the third for the cooking department of the house. I have seen one, a stout elderly party, the shape of a bolster with a tape tied round it, who asked if I had all I wanted, and offered to change my room (there are 150 of them) for a bigger, when some other parties should leave. As in all other Hotels, the people*6

Mrs Hodgson described Dyer as in the 7th Heaven of bliss. He, Dyer, has written me an excellent long letter which I must now answer. Please say everything I ought to say to everybody, and with love to Reggie and your parents, Ever your devoted husband| J. D. Hooker.
I leave it to you how to manage about the boys and Harriet seeing such parts of my letters as will interest them. I have written to Willy, Dyer and Harriet. Please thank Willy for his letter of July 16th, which I received on the same day but after that on which I posted a letter to him.