Utah Territory, so called from its Indian owners, the Yuta—“those that dwell in mountains”—is still, to a certain extent, terra incognita, not having yet been thoroughly explored, much less surveyed or settled.

The whole Utah country has been acquired, like Oregon, by conquest and diplomacy. By the partition of 1848, the parallel of N. lat. 42°, left unsettled, between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, by the treaties of the 22d of October, 1818, and the 12th of February, 1819, was prolonged northward to N. lat. 49°, thus adding to the United States California, Oregon, and Washington, while to Britain remained Vancouver’s Island and the joint navigation of the Columbia River. Under the Hispano-Americans the actual Utah Territory formed the northern portion of Alta California, and the peace of Guadalupe Hidalgo, concluded in 1848 between the United States and Mexico, transferred it from the latter to the former.

GEOGRAPHY OF UTAH TERRITORY.The present boundaries of Utah Territory are, northward (42° N. lat.), the State of Oregon; and southward, a line pursuing the parallel of N. lat. 37°, separating it from New Mexico to the southeast and from California to the southwest. The eastern portion is included between 106° and 120° W. long. (G.); a line following the crest of the Green River, the Wasach, the Bear River, and other sections of the Rocky Mountains, whose southern extremities anastomose to form the Sierra Nevada, separate it from Nebraska and Kansas. On the west it is bounded, between 116° and 120° W. long., by the lofty crest of the Sierra Nevada; the organization, however, of a new territory, the “Nevada,” on the landward slope of the Snowy Range, has diminished its dimensions by about half. Utah had thus 5° of extreme breadth, and 14° of total length; it was usually reckoned 650 miles long from east to west, and 350 broad from north to south. The shape was an irregular parallelogram, of which the area was made to vary from 188,000 to 225,000 square miles, almost the superficies of France.

The surface configuration of Utah Territory is like Central Equatorial Africa, a great depression in a mountain land: a trough elevated 4000 to 5000 feet above sea level, subtended on all sides by mountains 8000 to 10,000 feet high, and subdivided by transverse ridges. The “Rim of the Basin” is an uncontinuous line formed by the broken chains of Oregon to the north, and to the south by the little-known sub-ranges of the Rocky Mountains; the latter also form the eastern wall, while the Sierra Nevada hems in the west. Before the present upheaval of the country the Great Interior Basin was evidently a sweetwater inland sea; the bench formation, a system of water-marks, is found in every valley, while detached and parallel blocks of mountain, trending almost invariably north and south, were in geological ages rock-islands protruding from the lake surface like those that now break the continuity of that “vast and silent sea” the Great Salt Lake. Between these primitive and metamorphic ridges lie the secondary basins, whose average width may be 15-20 miles; they open into one another by kanyons and passes, and are often separated longitudinally, like “waffle-irons,” by smaller divides running east and west, thus converting one extended strip of secondary into a system of tertiary valleys. The Great Basin, which is not less than 500 miles long by 500 broad, is divided by two large chains, which run transversely from northeast to southwest. The northernmost is the range of the Humboldt River, rising 5000-6000 feet above the sea. The southern is the prolongation of the Wasach, whose southwestern extremity abuts upon the Pacific coast range; it attains a maximum elevation of nearly 12,000 feet. Without these mountains, whose gorges are fed during the spring, and even in the summer, by melted snow, there would be no water. The levels of the valleys are still unknown; it is yet a question how far they are irregular in elevation, whether they have formed detached lakes, or whether they slope uniformly and by steps toward the Great Salt Lake and the other reservoirs scattered at intervals over the country.

The water-shed of the Basin is toward the north, south, east, and west: the affluents of the Columbia and the Colorado rivers carry off the greatest amount of drainage. One of the geographical peculiarities of the Territory is the “sinking,” as it is technically called, of the rivers. The phenomenon is occasioned by the porous nature of the soil. The larger streams, like the Humboldt and the Carson rivers, form terminating lakes. The smaller are either absorbed by sand, or sink, like the South African fountains, in ponds and puddles of black mire, beneath which is peaty earth that burns as if by spontaneous combustion, and smoulders for a long time in dry weather: the waters either reappear, or, escaping under the surface—a notable instance of the “subterranean river”—feed the greater drains and the lakes. The potamology is more curious than useful; the streams, being unnavigable, play no important part in the scheme of economy.

Utah Territory is well provided with lakes; of these are two nearly parallel chains extending across the country. The easternmost begins at the north, with the Great Salt Lake, the small tarns of the Wasach, the Utah, or Sweetwater Reservoir, the Nicollet, and the Little Salt Lake, complete the line which is fed by the streams that flow from the western counterslope of the Wasach. The other chain is the drainage collected from the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada; it consists of Mud, Pyramid, Carson, Mono, and Walker’s lakes. Of these, Pyramid Lake, so called by Colonel Frémont, its explorer, from a singular rock in the centre, is the most beautiful—a transparent water, 700 feet above the level of the Great Salt Lake, and walled in by precipices nearly 3000 feet high.

The principal thermal features of Utah Territory are the Bear Springs, near the Fort Hall Road. The Harrowgate Springs, near Great Salt Lake City, have already been alluded to. Between the city and Bear River there is a fountain of strong brine, described as discharging a large volume of water. There are sulphurous pools at the southern extremity of the Great Salt Lake Valley. Others are chalybeate, coating the earth and the rocks with oxide of iron. Almost every valley has some thermal spring, in which various confervæ flourish; the difficulty is to find good cold water.

Another curious geographical peculiarity of the Territory is the formation of the mountains. For the most part the ridges, instead of presenting regular slopes, more or less inclined, are formed of short but acute angular cappings superimposed upon flatter prisms. It often happens that after easily ascending two thirds from the base, the upper part suddenly becomes wall-like and insurmountable.

Utah Territory is situated in the parallel of the Mediterranean; the southern boundary corresponds with the provinces along the Amoor lately acquired by Russia, and with Tasmania in the southern hemisphere. CLIMATE OF UTAH TERRITORY.But the elevation, that grand modifier of climate, renders it bleak and liable to great vicissitudes of temperature. The lowest valley rises 4000 feet above sea level; the mountains behind Great Salt Lake City are 6000 feet high; Mount Nebo is marked 8000, and the Twin Peaks, that look upon the “Happy Valley,” were ascertained barometrically by Messrs. O. Pratt and A. Carrington to be 11,660 feet in height: in the western part of the Territory the Sierra Nevada averages 2000 feet above the South Pass, and it has peaks that tower thousands of feet above that altitude. These snowy masses, in whose valleys thaw is seldom known, exercise a material effect upon the climate, and cause the cultivator to wage fierce war with the soil. The air is highly rarefied by its altitude. Captain Stansbury’s barometrical observations for May, June, July, and August, give as a maximum 27·80 at 9 A.M. on the 4th of August, and minimum 22·86 at sunrise on the 19th of June, with a general range between 25° and 26°. New-comers suffer from difficulty of breathing; often after sudden and severe exercise, climbing, or running, the effect is like the nausea, sickness, and fainting experienced upon Mont Blanc and in Tibet; even horses feel it, and must pass two or three months before they are acclimatized.[152]

The climate of the Basin has been compared with that of the Tartar plains of High Asia. Spring opens in the valleys with great suddenness; all is bloom and beauty below, while the snow-line creeps lingeringly up the mountain side, and does not disappear till the middle of June. Thus there are but three months of warmth in the high lands; the low lands have four, beginning with a May-day like that of England. At the equinoxes, both vernal and autumnal, there are rains in the bottoms, which in the upper levels become sleet or snow. Between April and October showers are rare; there are, however, exceptions, heavy downfalls, with thunder, lightning, and hail. “Clouds without water” is a proverbial expression; a dark, heavy pall, which in woodland countries would burst with its weight, here sails over the arid, sun-parched surface, and discharges its watery stores in the kanyons and upon the mountains. During the first few years after the arrival of the Saints there was little rain either in spring or autumn; in 1860 it extended to the middle of June. The change may be attributed to cultivation and plantation; thus also may be explained the North American Indian’s saying that the pale-face brings with him his rain. The same has been observed in Kansas and New Mexico, and is equally remarked by the natives of Cairo, the Aden Coal-hole, and Kurrachee. Seed-time lasts from April to the 10th of June.

The summer is hot, but the lightness and the aridity of the air prevent its being unwholesome. During my visit the thermometer (F.) placed in a room with open windows showed at dawn 63-66°; at noon, 75°; and at sunset, 70°: the greatest midday heat was 105°. The mornings and evenings, cooled by breezes from the mountains, were deliciously soft and pure. The abundant electricity was proved, as in Sindh and Arabia, by frequent devils or dust-pillars, like huge columns of volcanic smoke, that careered over the miraged plains, violently excited where they touched the negative earth, and calm in the positive strata of the upper air, whence their floating particles were precipitated. Dust-storms and thunder-storms are frequent and severe. Clouds often gather upon the peaks, and a heavy black nimbus rises behind the Wasach wall, setting off its brilliant sunlit side, but there is seldom rain. Showers are preceded, as in Eastern Africa, by puffs and gusts of cold air, and are expected in Great Salt Lake City when the clouds come from the west and southwest, opposite and over the “Black Rock;” otherwise they will cling to the hills. Even in the hottest weather, a cold continuous wind, as from the nozzle of a forge-bellows, pours down the deep damp kanyons, where the snow lingers, and travelers, especially at night, prepare to pass across the ravine mouths with blankets and warm clothing. Where the federal troops encamped on the stony bench opposite the Provo Kanyon, it was truly predicted that they would soon be blown out. When summer is protracted, severe droughts are the result. Harvest-time is in the beginning of July.

About early September the heat ends. In 1860, the first snow fell upon the Twin Peaks and their neighborhood on the 12th of September. Rains then usually set in for a fortnight or three weeks, and mild weather often lasts till the end of October. November is partially a fine month; after two or three snowy days, the Indian summer ushers in the most enjoyable weather of the year, which, when short, ends about the middle of November.

Winter has three very severe months, reckoned from December. Icy winds blow hard, and gales are sometimes so high that spray is carried from the Great Salt Lake to the City, a distance of 10-12 miles. In 1854-5 hundreds of cattle perished in the snow. Usually in mid-winter, snow falls every day with a high westerly wind, veering toward the north, and thick with poudré—dry icy spiculæ, hard as gravel. The thermometer is not often below zero in the bottoms; on the 13th of December, 1859, however, the thermometer at daylight, with the barometer at 26·250, showed -22° (F.); 5° or 6° lower than it had ever been before. The snow seldom lies in the valleys deeper than a man’s knee; it is dry, and readily thawed by the sun. A vast quantity is drifted into the kanyons and passes, where the people, as in Styria, often become prisoners at home. These crevasses, hundreds of feet deep, retain their icy stores throughout the year. It is asserted by those who believe in a Pacific Railway upon this line[153] that the Wasach can be traversed at all seasons; at present, however, sledge transit only is practicable, and at times even that is found impossible.

It can not be doubted that this climate of arid heat and dry cold is eminently suited to most healthy and to many sickly constitutions: children and adults have come from England apparently in a dying state, and have lived to be strong and robust men. I have elsewhere alluded to the effect of rarefaction upon the English physique: another has been stated, namely, that the atmosphere is too fine and dry to require, or even to permit, the free use of spirituous liquors. Paralysis is rare; scrofula and phthisis are unknown, as in Nebraska—the climate wants that humidity which brings forward the predisposition. It is also remarkable that, though all drink snow-water, and though many live in valleys where there is no free circulation of air, goître and cretinism are not yet named. The City Council maintains an excellent sanitary supervision, which extends to the minutest objects that might endanger the general health. The stream of emigrants which formerly set copiously westward is now dribbling back toward its source, and a quarantine is established for those who arrive with contagious diseases. Great Salt Lake City is well provided with disciples of Æsculapius, against whom there is none of that prejudice founded upon superstition and fanaticism which anti-Mormon writers have detected. Dr. Francis, an English Mormon, lately died, leaving Dr. Anderson, a graduate of Maryland College, to take his place: Dr. Bernhisel prefers politics to physic, and Dr. Kay is the chief dentist.

DISEASES.The normal complaints are easily explained by local peculiarities—cold, alkaline dust, and overindulgence in food.

Neuralgia is by no means uncommon. Many are compelled to wear kerchiefs under their hats; and if a head be not always uncovered, there is some reason for it. Rheumatism, as in England, affects the poorer classes, who are insufficiently fed and clothed. Pneumonia, in winter, follows exposure and hard work. The pleuro-pneumonia, which in 1860 did so much damage to stock in New England, did not extend to Utah Territory: the climate, however, is too like that of the Cape of Storms to promise lasting immunity. Catarrhs are severe and lasting; they are accompanied by bad toothaches and sore throats, which sometimes degenerate into bronchitis. Diphtheria is not yet known. The measles have proved especially fatal to the Indians: in 1850, “Old Elk,” the principal war-chief of the Timpanogos Yutas, died of it: erysipelas also kills many of the wild men.

For ophthalmic disease, the climate has all the efficients of the Valley of the Nile, and, unless suitable precautions are taken, the race will, after a few generations, become tender-eyed as Egyptians. The organ is weakened by the acrid irritating dust from the alkaline soil, which glistens in the sun like hoar-frost. Snow-blindness is common on the mountains and in the plains: the favorite preventive, when goggles are unprocurable, is to blacken the circumorbital region and the sides of the nose with soot—the kohl, surmah, or collyrium of the Far West: the cure is a drop of nitrate of silver or laudanum. The mucous membrane in horses, as among men, is glandered, as it were, by alkali, and the chronic inflammation causes frequent hemorrhage: the nitrous salts in earth and air exasperate to ulcers sunburns on the nose and mouth: it is not uncommon to see men riding or walking with a bit of paper instead of a straw between their lips. Wounds must be treated to great disadvantage where the climate, like that of Abyssinia, renders a mere scratch troublesome. The dryness of the air produces immunity from certain troublesome excrescences which cause shooting pains in humid regions, and the pedestrian requires no vinegar and water to harden his feet: on the other hand, horses’ hoofs, as in Sindh and Arabia, must be stuffed with tar, to prevent sun-crack.

Under the generic popular name “mountain fever” are included various species of febrile affections, intermittent, remittent, and typhoid: they are treated successfully with quinine.

Emigrants are advised to keep up hard work and scanty fare after arrival, otherwise the sudden change from semi-starvation and absence of fruit and vegetables upon the prairies to plenty in the settlements may cause dyspepsia, dysentery, and visceral inflammation. Some are attacked by “liver complaint,” the trivial term for the effects of malaria, which, when inhaled, affects successively the lungs, blood, liver, and other viscera. The favorite, and, indeed, the only known successful treatment is by mineral acids, nitric, muriatic, and others.[154] Scurvy is unknown to the settlers; when brought in after long desert marches, it yields readily to a more generous diet and vegetables, especially potatoes, which, even in the preserved form, act as a specific. The terrible scorbutic disease, called the “black canker of the plains,” has not extended so far west.

ANIMALS OF UTAH TERRITORY.There is not much sport with fur, feather, and fin in this part of the Far West: the principal carnivors of the Great Basin are the cougar (F. unicolor) and the cat-o’-mountain, the large and small wolf, a variety of foxes, the red (V. fulvus), the great-tailed (V. macrourus) and the silver (V. argentatus), whose spoils were once worth their weight in silver. There are minks, ermines, skunks, American badgers, and wolverines or gluttons, which ferret out caches of peltries and provisions, and are said sometimes to attack man. Of rodents the principal are the beaver, a burrowing hare, the jackass-rabbit (L. callotis), porcupines, the geomys or gophar, a sand-rat peculiar to America, the woodchuck or ground-hog, many squirrels, especially the Spermophilus tredecim lineatus, which swarms in hilly ground, and muskrat (F. zibeticus), which, like other vermin, is eaten by Indians. The principal pachyderm is the hyrax, called by the settlers “cony.” Of the ruminants we find the antelope, deer, elk, and the noble bighorn, or Rocky Mountain sheep, the moufflon or argali of the New World.

Of the raptors the principal are the red-tailed hawk (B. borealis), the sharp-shinned hawk (A. fuscus), the sparrow-hawk, and the vulturine turkey-buzzard. Of game-birds there are several varieties of quail, called partridges, especially the beautiful blue species (O. Californica), and grouse, especially the sage-hen (T. urophasianus): the water-fowl are swans (C. Americanus), wild geese in vast numbers, the white pelican, here a migrating bird, the cormorant (Phalacrocorax), the mallard or greenhead (A. boschas), which loves the water of Jordan and the western Sea of Tiberias, the teal, red-breasted and green-winged, the brant (A. bernicla), the plover and curlew, the gull (a small Larus), a blue heron, and a brown crane (G. Canadensis), which are found in the marshes throughout the winter. The other members of the family are the bluebird (A. sialia), the humming-bird (Trochilus), finches, woodpeckers, the swamp blackbird, and the snowbird, small passerines: there is also a fine lark (Sturnella) with a harsh note, which is considered a delicacy in autumn.

Besides a variety of gray and green lizards, the principal Saurian is the Phrynosoma, a purely American type, popularly called the horned frog—or toad, although its tail, its scaly body, and its inability to jump disprove its title to rank as a batrachian—and by the Mexicans chameleon, because it is supposed to live on air. It is of many species, for which the naturalist is referred to the Appendix of Captain Stansbury’s Exploration. The serpents are chiefly rattlesnakes, swamp-adders, and water-snakes. The fishes are perch, pike, bass, chub, a mountain trout averaging three pounds, and salmon trout which has been known to weigh thirty pounds. There are but few mollusks, periwinkles, snails, and fresh-water clams.[155]

The botany of the Great Basin has been investigated by Messrs. Frémont and Stansbury, who forwarded their collections for description to Professor John Torrey, of New York: M. Remy has described his own herbarium. To these valuable works the reader may be referred for all now known upon the subject.

GEOLOGY OF UTAH TERRITORY.The rocks in Utah Territory are mostly primitive—granite, brick-red jasper, syenite, hornblende, and porphyry, with various quartzes, of which the most curious is a white nodule surrounded by a crystalline layer of satin spar. The presence of obsidian, scoriæ, and lava—apparently a dark brown mud tinged with iron, and so vitrified by heat that it rings—evidences volcanic action. Many of the ridges are a carboniferous limestone threaded by calcareous spar, and in places rich with encrinites and fossil corallines; it rests upon or alternates with hard and compact grits and sandstone. The kanyons in the neighborhood of Great Salt Lake City supply boulders of serpentine, fine gray granite, coarse red ochrish pœcilated crystalline-white and metamorphic sandstones, a variety of conglomerates, especially granitic, with tufa in large masses, talcose and striated slates, some good for roofing, gypsum (plaster of Paris), pebbles of alabaster and various kinds of limestones, some dark and fetid, others oolitic, some compact and massive, black, blue, or ash-colored, seamed with small veins of white carbonate of lime, others light gray and friable, cased with tufa, or veneered with jade. The bottom-soil in most parts is fitted for the adobe, and the lower hills contain an abundance of fossilless chalky lime, which makes tolerable mortar: the best is that near Deep Creek, the worst is in the vicinity of Great Salt Lake City. Near Fort Hall, in the northeast corner of the basin, there is said to be a mountain of marble displaying every hue and texture: marble is also found in large crystalline nodules like arragonite.

Utah Territory will produce an ample supply of iron.[156] According to the Mormons, it resembles that of Missouri, and the gangue contains eighty per cent. of pure metal, which, to acquire the necessary toughness, must be alloyed with imported iron. Gold, according to Humboldt, is constant in meridional mountains, and we may expect to find it in a country abounding with crystalline rocks cut by dikes of black and gray basalt and porous trap, gneiss, micaceous schists, clayey and slaty shales, and other argillaceous formations. It is generally believed that gold exists upon the Wasach Mountains, within sight of Great Salt Lake City, and in 1861 a traveling party is reported to have found a fine digging in the north. Lumps of virgin silver are said to have been discovered upon the White Mountains, in the south of the Territory, and Judge Ralston, I am informed, has lately hit upon a mine near the western route. Copper, zinc, and lead have been brought from Little Salt Lake Valley and sixty miles east of the Vegas de Santa Clara. Coal, principally bituminous—like that nearer the Pacific—is found mostly in the softer limestones south of the city, in a country of various marls, indurated clays, and earthy sandstones. In 1855 a vein of five feet thick, in quality resembling that of Maryland, was discovered west of the San Pete Creek, on the road to Manti. In Iron County, 250 to 280 miles south of Great Salt Lake City, inexhaustible coal-beds as well as iron deposits are said to line the course of the Green River, and, that nothing may be wanting, considerable affluents supply abundant water-power. A new digging had been discovered shortly before my arrival on a tributary of the Weber River, east of the City of the Saints, and upon the western route many spots were pointed out to me as future coal-mines. Timber being principally required for building, fencing, and mechanical purposes, renders firewood expensive: in the city a cartage of fifteen miles is necessary, and the price is thereby raised from $7 in summer to a maximum of $20 in the hard season per cord of sixteen by four feet. Unless the Saints would presently be reduced to the necessity of “breakfasting with Ezekiel,” they must take heart and build a tramroad to the south.

Saltpetre is found—upon paper: here, as in other parts of America, it is deficient: a reward of $500 offered for a sample of gunpowder manufactured from Valley Tan materials produced no claimants. Sulphur is only too common. Saleratus or alkaline salts is the natural produce of the soil. Borax and petroleum or mineral tar have been discovered, and the native alum has been analyzed and pronounced good by Dr. Gale.[157] Rubies, emeralds, and other small but valuable stones are found in the chinks of the primitive rocks throughout the western parts of the Territory. I have also seen chalcedony, sardonyx, carnelian, and various agates.

Utah Territory is pronounced by immigrants from the Old Country to be a “mean land,” hard, dry, and fit only for the steady, sober, and hard-working Mormon. Scarcely one fiftieth part is fit for tillage; farming must be confined to rare spots, in which, however, an exceptional fertility appears. Even in the arable lands there is a great variety: some do not exceed 8-10 bushels per acre, while Captain Stansbury mentions 180 bushels[158] of wheat being raised upon 3·50 acres of ground from one bushel of seed, and estimates the average yield of properly-cultivated land at 40 bushels, whereas rich Pennsylvania rarely gives 30 per acre.[159] I have heard of lands near the fresh-water lake which bear from 60 to 105 bushels per acre.

SOIL.The cultivable tracts are of two kinds, bench-land and bottom-land.

The soil of the bench-lands is fertile, a mixture of the highland feldspath with the débris of decomposed limestone. It is comparatively free from alkalines, the bane of the valleys; but as rain is wanting, it depends, like the Basses-Pyrénées, upon irrigation, and must be fertilized by the mountain torrents that issue from the kanyons. As a rule, the creeks dwindle to rivulets and sink in the porous alluvium before they have run a mile from the hill-foot, and reappear in the arid plains at a level too low for navigation: in such places artesian wells are wanted. The soil, though fertile, is thin, requiring compost: manure is here allowed to waste, the labor of the people sufficing barely for essentials. I am informed that two bushels of semence are required for each acre, and that the colonists sow too scantily: a judicious rotation of crops is also yet to come. The benches are sometimes extensive: a strip, for instance, runs along the western base of the Wasach Mountains, with a varying breadth of 1-3 miles, from 80 miles north of Great Salt Lake City to Utah Lake and Valley, the southern terminus of cultivation, a total length of 120 miles. FRUITS.These lands produce various cereals, especially wheat and buckwheat, oats, barley, and a little Indian corn, all the fruits and vegetables of a temperate zone, and flax, hemp, and linseed in abundance. The wild fruits are the service berry, choke-cherry, buffalo berry, gooseberry, an excellent strawberry, and black, white, red, and yellow mountain currants, some as large as ounce bullets.

The bottom-lands, where the creeks extend, are better watered than the uplands, but they are colder and salter. The refrigerated air seeks the lowest levels; hence in Utah Territory the benches are warmer than the valleys, and the spring vegetation is about a fortnight later on the banks of Jordan than above them. Another cause of cold is the presence of saleratusALKALINE SALTS. or alkaline salts, the natural effect of the rain being insufficient to wash them out. Experiment proved in Sindh that nothing is more difficult than to eradicate this evil from the soil: the sweetest earth brought from afar becomes tainted by it: sometimes the disease appears when the crop is half grown; at other times it attacks irregularly—one year, for instance, will see a fine field of wheat, and the next none. When inveterate, it breaks out in leprous eruptions, and pieces of efflorescence can be picked up for use: a milder form induces a baldness of growth, with an occasional birth of chenopodiaceæ. Many of the streams are dangerous to cattle, and often in the lower parts of the valleys there are ponds and pools of water colored and flavored like common ley. According to the people, a small admixture is beneficial to vegetation; the grass is rendered equal for pasturage to the far-famed salt-marshes of Essex and of the Atlantic coast; potatoes, squashes, and melons become sweeter, and the pie-plant loses its acidity. On the other hand, the beet has been found to deteriorate, no small misfortune at such a distance from the sugar-cane.

Besides salt-drought and frost, the land has to contend against an Asiatic scourge. The cricket (Anabrus simplex?) is compared by the Mormons to a “cross between the spider and the buffalo:” it is dark, ungainly, wingless, and exceedingly harmful. The five red-legged grasshopper (Œdipoda corallipes), about the size of the English migratory locust, assists these “black Philistines,” and, but for a curious provision of nature, would render the land well-nigh uninhabitable. A small species of gull flocks from its resting-place in the Great Salt Lake to feed upon the advancing host; the “glossy bird of the valley, with light red beak and feet, delicate in form and motion, with plumage of downy texture and softness,” stayed in 1848 the advance of the “frightful bug,” whose onward march nor fires, nor hot trenches, nor the cries of the frantic farmer could arrest. We can hardly wonder that the Mormons, whose minds, so soon after the exodus, were excited to the highest pitch, should have seen in this natural phenomenon a miracle, a special departure from the normal course of events, made by Providence in their favor, or accuse them, as anti-Mormons have done, of forging signs and portents.

But, while many evils beset agriculture in Utah Territory, grazing is comparatively safe, and may be extended almost ad libitum. The valleys of this land of Goshen supply plentiful pasturage in the winter; as spring advances cattle will find gamma and other grasses on the benches, and as, under the influence of the melting sun, the snow-line creeps up the hills, flocks and herds, like the wild graminivorants, will follow the bunch-grass, which, vivified by the autumnal rains, breeds under the snow, and bears its seed in summer. In the basin of the Green River, fifty miles south of Fillmore City, is a fine wool-producing country 7000 square miles in area. Even the ubiquitous sage will serve for camels. As has been mentioned, Durhams, Devons, and Merino tups have found their way to Great Salt Lake City, and the terrible milk-sickness[160] of the Western States has not.

In 1860 the Valley of the Great Salt Lake alone produced 306,000 bushels of grain, of which about 17,000 were oats. Lieutenant Gunnison, estimating the average yield of each plowed acre at 2000 lbs. (33¹⁄₂ bushels), a fair estimate, and “drawing the meat part of the ration, or one half,” from the herds fed elsewhere, fixes the maximum of population in Utah Territory at 4000 souls to a square mile, and opines that it will maintain with ease one million of inhabitants.

Timber, I have said, is a growing want throughout the country; the “hair of the earth-animal” is by no means luxuriant. Great Cotton-wood Kanyon is supposed to contain supplies for twenty years, but it is chiefly used for building purposes. The Mormons, unlike the Hibernians, of whom it was said in the last century that no man ever planted an orchard, have applied themselves manfully to remedying the deficiency, and the next generation will probably be safe. At present, “hard woods,” elm, hackberry, pecan or button-wood, hickory, mulberry, basswood, locust, black and English walnut, are wanted, and must be imported from the Eastern States. The lower kanyons and bottoms are clothed with wild willow, scrub maple, both hard and soft, box elder, aspen, birch, cotton-wood, and other amentaciæ, and in the south with spruce and dwarf ash. The higher grounds bear stunted cedars white and red, balsam and other pines, the dwarf oak, which, like the maple, is a mere scrub, and the mountain mahogany, a tough, hard, and strong, but grainless wood, seldom exceeding eight inches in diameter. Hawthorn (a Cratægus) also exists, and in the southern and western latitudes the piñon (P. monophyllus), varying from the size of an umbrella to twenty feet in height, feeds the Indians with its oily nut, which not a little resembles the seed of the pinaster and the Mediterranean P. Pinea, and supplies a rich gum for strengthening plasters.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION IN UTAH TERRITORY.The present state of agriculture in the vicinity of Great Salt Lake City will best be explained by the prospectus of the annual show for 1860.[161] Wheat thrives better than maize, which in the northern parts suffers from the late frosts, and requires a longer summer. Until oats and barley can be grown in sufficient quantities, horses are fed upon heating wheat, which only the hardest riding enables them to digest. Holcus saccharatum, or Chinese millet, succeeds where insufficient humidity is an obstacle to the sugar-cane. The fault of the vegetables here, as in California, is excessive size, which often renders them insipid; the Irish potato, however, is superior to that of Nova Scotia and Charleston; the onions are large and mild as those of Spain. The white carrot, the French bean, and the cucumber grow well, and the “multicaulis mania” has borne good fruit in the shape of cabbage. The size of the beets suggested in 1853 the project originated in France by Napoleon the Great: $100,000 were expended upon sugar-making machinery; the experiment, however, though directed by a Frenchman, failed, it is said, on account of the alkali contained in the root, and the Saints are accused of having distilled for sale bad spirit from the useless substance. The deserts skirting the Western Holy Land have also their manna; the leaves of poplars and other trees on the banks of streams distill, at divers seasons of the year, globules of honey-dew, resembling in color gum Arabic, but of softer consistence and less adhesiveness: the people collect it with spoons into saucers. Cotton thrives in the southern and southwestern part of Utah Territory when the winter is mild: at the meeting-place of waters near the Green and Grand Rivers that unite to form the Colorado, the shrub has been grown with great success.

The principal value of Utah Territory is its position as a great half-way station—a Tadmor in the wilderness—between the Valley of the Mississippi and the Western States, California and Oregon; it has thus proved a benefit to humanity. THE PAST OF MORMONLAND.The Mormons, “flying from civilization and Christianity,” attempted to isolate themselves from the world in a mountain fastness; they were foiled by an accident far beyond human foresight. They had retired to a complete oasis, defended by sterile volcanic passes, which in winter are blocked up with snow, girt by vast waterless and uninhabitable deserts, and unapproachable from any settled country save by a painful and dangerous march of 600-1000 miles. Presently, in 1850, the gold fever broke out on the Pacific sea-board; thousands of people not only passed through Utah Territory, but were also compelled to remain there and work for a livelihood. The transit received a fresh impulse in 1858 by the gold discovered at Pike’s Peak, and in 1859 by the rich silver mines found in the Carson and Washoe Valleys, on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada. Carson Valley, which was settled by Colonel Reece in 1852, and colonized in 1855 by 500 Mormons, was soon cleared of Saints by the influx of prospectors and diggers, and the other El Dorados drew off much Gentile population, which was an incalculable boon to the Mormons. They thus rid themselves of the “thriving lawyers, gamblers, prostitutes, criminals, and desperadoes, loafers, and drunkards,” who made New Jerusalem a carnival of horrors. The scene is now shifted to Denver and Carson cities, where rape and robbery, intoxication and shooting are attributed to their true causes, the gathering together of a lawless and excited crowd, not to the “baleful shade of that deadly Upas-tree, Mormonism.”