The Mill in Liberty Park

THE MILL IN LIBERTY PARK. FROM A SKETCH BY ALFRED LAMBOURNE. It might be thought, perhaps, that in a country so recently settled as Utah, there would be very few buildings of a purely picturesque character. Such, however, is not the fact* There are all sorts of rustic bits, worthy the sketcher's attention, by the quiet valley streams and at the village crossroads— weather-stained mills with cumbrous wheels, odd cottages, all sorts of quaint pieces of architecture, surrounded by fields and orchard walls. The old mill in Liberty Park was once highly picturesque ; that is, especially in connection with its surroundings. In the spring time there was a bright and pleasant scene there, when the rushes of the mill-pond first thrust up their fresh green blades from the water, but growing more sombre as the season advanced until, in summer, the rushes formed an all but unimpenetrable fen, inhabited by all the marauding blackbirds of the locality. Perfectly in keeping with the mill and its environments were the rain storms of autumn, when the rushes were all withered and brown, and up amongst them were the tall milkweeds with faded, yellow leaves and silken tassels hanging from the bursted seed-pods. The above sketch was taken by the flume, where the waters of the pond emptied when the mill was at rest.

**-„Tj^0^ ■ ■ 2l ' . - v ' '" ■ ,y--- w ih i ;.u \ v -■' . 1 J ^jmn 1 i^m 1 < " 1 ■- — ■ 1 I 1 »•»«*! 1 '^k~ g=ffa "" ."" ."':-— t: ■■ - *■**" « -p fr^~~~~ , g ~- =L_^ .-^=33^^ THE SAW MILL, MOUTH OF NOISY WATER. FROM A SKETCH BY ALFRED LAMBOURNE. Hardly could we find a more pictorial scene than was once the Church blacksmith-shop, a short distance beyond the Eagle Gate. That is, in connection with the water mill that once stood by it. The gray adobe walls of the shop, the wheel and grass-grown flume of the mill, were reflected in a pool of the passing stream. And in the background were the bold outlines of the northern hills. No less picturesque was the saw-mill, a short distance beyond; and again the flour mill beyond that. In brief, the mouth of Noisy Water, a few years ago, was a sort of paradise for the sketcher of rustic scenes. There was something impressive in the thought, as one used to look at the mill or saw wheel, that the water that turned it came from the wilds that heard the eagle's scream and the cries of the wild beasts, and yet passed on to irrigate the fields and orchards of the Pioneers. And the logs that lay by the saw-mill, too ; they had been the solemn pines •which grew where raged the mountain storms; their branches had been vocal to the winds of summer and winter; the lightnings had played among them, and the wild snows had drifted. The pines had murmured like the waves of a summer sea; or shrieked before the fierce onslaught of the northern blast.