Under Foch's Command: A Tale of the Americans in France
9781465655059
330 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
It was one of those glorious days which they enjoy so frequently west of the giant range of the Rocky Mountains, an exhilarating day when one rises from one's bed and issues into the open to discover a snap in the air. For spring was but just coming, and the mountains were still clad in snow and in hoar frost; the atmosphere positively sparkled, while the rays of the sun coming aslant through a giant canyon swept across the steep slopes of the mountain, where it encompassed the apparently sleeping city down below, and were reflected from thousands of minute angles, from masses of virgin snow, and from icicles which had gathered since the previous evening. Could one have clambered into those mountains, or into the canyon we have mentioned, one would have found here and there spring flowers already pushing their tender buds through the coating of snow, here far thinner than higher up towards the peaks of the range. In a hundred hollows little rivulets were running, while towards the centre of the canyon to which all progressed, some at speed and some leisurely, there raced a brook, gathering size at an inordinate pace, sweeping on its surface masses of half-melted snow, flashing here and there as the rays struck upon bubbling eddies, and then plunging beneath an arch of snow, to go tumbling over rocks farther down, and so speed on towards the city. Compare this scene with the peaks above, still ice-bound, with spring hardly come as yet, so that residence at that elevation was not to be encouraged. Compare it with the city down below: a city of wide, well-swept, tree-edged streets, of big houses and wide open spaces, green already. Down there was a different scene, throbbing with life, though from the heights above it appeared to be slumbering; with busy cars clanging their way and motor-cars dashing hither and thither. Seen from the heights above it presented a whitish blotch, picked out by red roofs here and there, and by dark streaks which represented the roads. It appeared to be a gigantic gridiron, for every block of houses was square, and the roads intersected one another at right angles. Out beyond it see the glimmer from a vast expanse of water—a lake—the first glimpse of which astounded and delighted the eyes of Brigham Young and those pioneers who, forsaking the East, fought their way across the prairie to discover a new land, and, peeping downward at the sight we are presenting to our reader, imagined they had gained a fertile country—a country flowing with milk and honey. Fertile indeed it looks from the mountains: trees by the thousand stretch out on every hand, casting a delightful shade, and farther afield green patches of vast extent hug the lake and stretch away into the open country, with brown squares here and there, on which fruit farms abound, and where dairy-men work for their living. But hasten to the lake, dip a hand in it, and taste the water. It is brine. For down there is a huge salt lake, which gives its name to the city. Down below there is Utah, which, for all its salt lake and its salt desert, has been termed "God's own country". Ten miles away perhaps, beyond the smoke of the city, yet surrounded in the smoke and dust which it itself creates, lies a copper-mine of world-wide notoriety. Rails run hither and thither; tubs and trucks clank over them; while the mountain side, which the active hands of man and the never-ceasing grinding of machinery is eating away at a rapid pace, presents a series of steps, as it were, along which other rails are laid, where locomotives grunt, where trucks screech their way past the wide openings which give admission to the centre of the mountain.
