For some time Aggie found no difficulty in keeping her word, for the train were obliged to pass over a part of the Rocky Mountains, and many a strange adventure they met upon the way. Those that had been over the route before said they got along remarkably well, while those to whom the experience was new, declared that with the breaking down of some wagons, the unloading of others, and letting them and goods they contained down the precipices by ropes, and the accidents attendant upon such work, they found the journey anything but delightful. The children enjoyed this part of the trip more than any other, for, with the exception of Guy, they had no more work to do, and had much more to interest and amuse them.  
But upon the whole they were rather glad when they got upon the level ground again, and especially so when they neared the shores of the great Salt Lake, and passed by the city that stands upon its shores.
 
Mr. Harwood had intended to visit it, and spend three or four days in looking about the city and endeavoring to learn something about the manners and customs of the people that inhabited it, but several of the party were anxious to reach their destination, and for that and many other reasons they passed the dwelling place of the Mormons by. Although the children were greatly disappointed at not being able to go into the city, they could not help speaking and thinking with delight of the beautiful country they had passed over to reach it.
 
"It seems to me," said Aggie one day when they stopped to rest, "that four seasons had wandered out of some years and lost themselves up among those mountains."
 
"You're crazy!" said George contemptuously.
 
"I think not," said Guy kindly, "but what could have put such a queer idea as that into your head, Aggie?"
 
"Why you know," she said, "the grass was fresh and green there as if it was spring time, and yet very often while you were gathering buttercups to make me a chain, George and Gus would be pelting you with snow-balls, while the summer sun was shining upon us all the day long."
 
"That's so," exclaimed George, "I should never have thought of it again. It's the queerest place I ever saw in my life, except this very great valley which we are in now. Papa says it is over three hundred miles from the Rocky Mountains to the Sierra Nevadas, yet although we haven't been out of sight of the first for more than a week, we shall see the tops of the others in a few days, and then, hurrah! we've only to cross them and we shall be in California! Won't that be glorious?"
 
"Yes, I shall be glad," said Aggie, "for I was beginning to think as mamma said the other day, 'that we never should see a house again.' And won't you be glad, Guy, not to have to get up so early to make the fires in the morning, and to work so late at night, often after walking over the hot sands all day?"
 
"I don't know,&quo............