The City of the Saints, and Across the Rocky Mountains to California

The author records an overland journey to a prominent religious settlement in the Great Basin and the subsequent crossing of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast. He provides close observations of communal institutions, rituals, and urban layout, combines practical route descriptions and travel tips with vivid landscape notes, and documents interactions with settlers and travelers. The narrative interweaves diary-like immediacy, geographic and historical detail, illustrations, and references to earlier explorers, while offering measured commentary on religion, colonization, and the challenges of frontier travel.