Between Green River and the Mormon city no human interest divides your perpetually strained attention from Nature. Fort Bridger, a little over a day's stage-ride east of the city, is a large and quite populous trading-post and garrison of the United States; but although we found there a number of agreeable officers, whose acquaintance with their wonderful surroundings was thorough and scientific, and though at that period the fort was a rendezvous for our only faithful friend among the Utah Indians, Washki, the Snake chief, and that handful of his tribe who still remain loyal to their really noble leader and our Government, Fort Bridger left the shadowiest of impressions on my mind, compared with the natural glories of the surrounding scenery.
2 comments:
I found this post under your profile. I am interested to hear why this companion blog "erupted."
Meg
Meg, this blog is (obviously) under construction but . . . Ludlow's original narrative is quite jumbled, lending itself naturally to blogging. You can see from the exposed elements that I am building it in a non-sequential order, non-linear way by choosing visual and lexial elements etc and placing them when and where I please, reassembling the narrative under false dates where necessary, to smash up the relentless diaristic linearity of the blog. I figured out how to and thought of changing the post dates to the 1860s, while I was at it. . . But enough already. I am very interested in convincing falseness, as Umberto Eco describes it, "real fake."
I will create a link to the on-line original full text, on Atlantic.com, so you can see how I have had my way with it. The "Ball" narrative was by no means seamless, and I took liberties with his "tone." There is an enormous back-story here, which I may get to, time permitting, and of course, always with the agenda of beauty, mystery, devotion, etc. At first, I wanted to just get the tone of the "Sans Souci" audio in Ludlow's Profile - which, of course, means "Without a Care."
I also may add a few exterior links for the Ball, such as to LDS, PBS Mormons blog, to Ludlow's new biographical site, to biography of Brigham Young and Albert Bierstadt, his companion, etc., once the mood in these blogs is entirely unassailably established.
Thanks for watching, - "Ludlow"
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