Open Sesame

Before we enter the City of the Saints, let me briefly describe the greatest, not merely of the architectural curiosities, but, in my opinion, the greatest natural curiosity of any kind which I have ever seen or heard of. Mind, too, that I remember Niagara, the Cedar-Creek Bridge, and the Mammoth Cave, when I speak thus of the Church Buttes. They are situated a short distance from Fort Bridger; the overland road passes by their side. They consist of a sandstone bluff, reddish-brown in color, rising with the abruptness of a pile of masonry from the perfectly level plain, carved along its perpendicular face into a series of partially connected religious edifices. . . In each of the confex faces is an admirably proportioned doorway, a Gothic arch with deep-carved and elaborately fretted mouldings, so wonderfully perfect in its imitation that you almost feel like knocking for admittance, did you only know the "Open Sesame." Between and behind the doors, alternating with flying buttresses, are a series of deep-niched windows. . .