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cotton-wood and box-alder on the bottoms of some of the principal

streams.

A species of artemisia, generally known by the name of wild sage, abounds in most parts of the country, where vegetation of any kind exists, but particularly where there is not warmth and moisture sufficient to produce grass.

The inhabitable portions of the Great Basin are supposed to be capable of supporting a population of about 200,000.

The Great Salt Lake Valley is the largest known in the Great Basin, being about one hundred and twenty miles long, and from twenty to forty broad, but the Salt Lake occupies much of its northern portion. The surface of its center is level, ascending gently on either side toward the mountains. This valley is regarded as one of the healthiest portions of the globe; the air is very pure. Its altitude is forty-three hundred feet above the level of the sea; and some of the mountains on the east of the valley are more than a mile and a quarter high, and covered with perpetual snow; while in the valley the thermometer frequently rises above one hundred degrees. Near the city are two saline mineral springs, respectively of the temperature of one hundred and eight and one hundred and twenty-five degrees. The character of the soil of each of the valleys that are inhabitable is as follows: one portion of them is a vegetable loam, another a marly loam, and a third a gravelly stratum, containing some silicia. The other valleys bear a general resemblance to that named, except being smaller.

By means of irrigation, the Mormon valleys are made exceedingly productive. Wheat, rye, barley, buckwheat, oats and Indian corn are their agricultural products, and all the garden vegetables peculiar to the Middle and Western States are produced in great perfection. Tobacco and sweet potatoes can be produced in limited quantities. So fertile is their soil, that an average crop of wheat is fifty bushels to the acre. The system of irrigation prevents rust or smut striking the crop, and renders it sure.

The territory of the Mormons is unequaled as a stock-raising country, and they are, to a great extent, a pastoral people. The finest pastures of Lombardy are not more estimable than those on the east side of the Utah Lake and Jordan River. We find here that cereal anomaly, the bunch grass. It grows only on the bottoms of the streams, and on the table-lands of the warmest and most fertile valleys. It is of a kind peculiar to cold climates and elevated countries, and is, we presume, the same as the grama of New Mexico. In May, when the other grasses start, this fine plant dries upon its stalk, and becomes a light yellow straw, full of flavor and nourishment. It continues thus through what are the dry months of the climate until January, and then starts with a vigorous growth, like that of our own winter wheat in April, which keeps on until the return of another May. Whether as straw or grass, the cattle fatten on it the year round. The numer

ous little dells and sheltered spots that are found in the mountains are excellent sheep-walks. Hogs fatten on a succulent bulb or tuber, called the seacoe or seegose root, which is highly esteemed as a table vegetable by the Mormons.

Salt Lake City is pleasantly situated on a gentle declivity near the base of a mountain, about two miles east of the Utah outlet, or the River Jordan, and about twenty-two miles southeast of the Salt Lake. It is nearly on the same latitude with New York City, and is, by air lines, distant from New York two thousand one hundred miles; from St. Louis, one thousand two hundred; from San Francisco, five hundred and fifty; and from Oregon City and Santa Fe, each six hundred. During five months of the year it is shut out from all communication with the North, East or West, by mountains rendered impassable from snow. Through the town runs a beautiful brook of cool, limpid water, called City Creek. The city is laid out regularly, on an extensive scale; the streets crossing each other at right angles, and being each eight rods wide. Each lot contains an acre and a quarter of ground, and each block or square eight lots. Within the city are four public squares. The city and all the farming lands are irrigated by streams of beautiful water, which flow from the adjacent mountains. These streams have been, with great labor and perseverance, led in every direction. In the city, they flow on each side of the different streets, and their waters are let upon the inhabitants' gardens at regular periods, so likewise upon the extensive fields of grain lying to the south.

The greater part of the houses which had been built up to the close of 1850, were regarded as merely temporary; most of them were small but commodious, being, in general, constructed of adobe or sun-dried brick. Among the public buildings are a house for public worship, a council-house, a bath-house at the Warm Spring; and it is in contemplation to erect another temple more magnificent than that they formerly had at Nauvoo. On the temple square they intend to have a garden that will cost at least $100,000 at the commencement. Their missionaries have already made arrangements in the Eastern States, in Great Britain, France, Italy, Denmark, the German States, and in the islands of the sea, to gather the choicest seeds and fruits, and everything that can beautify and adorn it.

Public free-schools are established in the different wards into which they city is divided, in which the ordinary branches are taught, and in some the Latin, Greek, French and German languages, and that of the Society Islands. East of the city, a mile square is laid off for a State University, and the Mormons have appropriated for this object $5,000 a year for twenty years, to be paid out of the public treasury.

The pioneer party of the Mormons left Council Bluffs, Iowa, early in April, 1847. On the 23d of July, the first camp moved into the city. In the afternoon of the same day, they had three

plows and one harrow at work, and commenced building the first dam for irrigation. The next day they planted five acres of potatoes, and four days later proceeded to lay off the city; and so rapid had been their progress, that in 1850, three years after, it contained about eleven thousand inhabitants, who were mostly engaged in agriculture.

The city of Provo is on Provo River, on the east side of Utah Lake, and about fifty miles south of Salt Lake City. At the settlement in Sanpeech Valley are about one hundred and fifty families. In that valley are, it is said, many ruins covered with hieroglyphics. One place in particular is called by the Indians "God's Temple.” Here also remains of ancient pottery, both glazed and unglazed, are found in great abundance, and large quantities of bituminous

coal.

For a brief period, the trials, persecutions and hardships the Mormons endured appeared to have exerted a healthful and purifying influence on their character and conduct; but with returning prosperity came a new throng of adventurers, sharpers and knaves, and the forced morality and abstemiousness of the mass was abandoned with the dawn of returning safety and prosperity, and Salt Lake City is fast becoming as notorious for its indecencies, immorality, vice and crime as Nauvoo was in the days of its prosperity.

There is among the Mormons no security of life or property; the church is above law and controls the conscience and acts of its members at will. The members of the legislature are ostensibly elected by the people, but, by fair means or fraud, the nominees of the church are sure to be elected, and in a community so banded together it is not strange that robberies, extortions, and murders are things of common occurrence. Licentiousness, the legitimate offspring of polygamy, exists to an alarming extent, equaled nowhere out of the purlieus of "Five Points," in New York city; all sense of decency is lost sight of, an intercourse as open and promiscuous as among the cattle of the fields exists among them. There are numerous instances where a man has taken a woman and her daughters for wives, of the niece being sealed to the uncle, and the sister to her brother; and there is talk now of allowing the father to seal his daughter to himself. The dignitaries of the church are peculiarly skillful in procuring young girls for wives. Young men find it impossible to obtain one wife, consequently the affair of Absalom and his father's concubine is often acted on by the youthful saint. This system must ere a great while result in the disorganization of the community. States are made up of families, and we may as well expect a building to stand after its walls are torn away, as that a community will flourish wherein hatred, strife, and discord rankle in the bosom of the families of which it is composed. Their schools are so wretchedly managed that, instead of places of instruction, they are hotbeds of vice; the children grow up ungoverned and ungovernable. The school-room is

not only an arena of riot and disorder, but a seminary of vice-an incipient, embryo hell, where the most filthy and obscene ideas are instilled. It is a common thing for children there to retail the disgusting intimacies they have witnessed at home. The open profligacy and licentiousness of these youths are equaled nowhere save in the histories of Sodom and Gomorrah. The result of this precocious vice, of the licentiousness and brutality of the old, and the disgust which this has created in the minds of all those possessing a remnant of decency and morality, is already apparent in the rapid diminution of the numbers of the saints. When Joseph was at the height of his power at Nauvoo, his disciples in various parts of the earth numbered about 200,000. The Mormons boasted even a greater number. In 1853, they stated their number to be 150,000; but the actual number probably did not exceed 60,000 at that time.

In 1853, the population of Utah was claimed to be about 30,000; and although missionaries are sent out regularly to all parts of the globe, preaching this new and mysterious doctrine which promises to the believer plenty, prosperity, and a gratification of his sensual desires here, and a haven of rest, of enjoyment and happiness hereafter; and although the boldness with which these missionaries assert their divine commission, and the eagerness with which the ignorant, the destitute, and the superstitious are ever ready to welcome any new doctrine claiming supernatural authority, and promising enjoyment of such a nature as their degraded and brutal natures can most readily appreciate, are bringing in new converts daily, and crowds of bankrupts in purse, in reputation and honesty, driven from their homes by the force of public opinion, or anxious to try their talents where cunning, boldness, and unscrupulous ambition are the only requisites to success, and are always sure of affording the means and opportunity of spending a life of licentiousness and profligacy, are daily flocking into the New Zion; yet, notwithstanding these constant sources of supply, Mormonism is on the decrease, and it is to be hoped, that the saints will soon disappear from the land they have made infamous by their crimes; and the body of ignorant dupes, tools, and fanatics will gradually become absorbed and lost in a better population, and our Union will never be disgraced by the admission of a State in which licentiousness and crime are made part of its religious institutions.

A storm is evidently gathering about Utah, and the national authorities have determined, at every risk, to displace Brigham Young. A few months longer and the question must be settled. Either the master-spirit of this imposture must abandon his post of governor, or he must venture upon the terrible experiment of battling against the troops of the United States. In such an issue there would, in the end, be but one result, and the wretched Mormons, however desperate, daring, and courageous, would either be annihilated or compelled to fly for their lives. In the name of humanity, however, we repeat the hope, that such an awful alternative will be avoided.

THE GREAT SALT DESERT OF UTAH.

THE Great Salt Desert is situated just beyond the Great Salt Lake, on one of the routes of emigration to California. Its exact extent is unknown, but it covers a surface of several thousand square miles. A vivid sketch of a journey across this dreary waste is given by a gentleman who crossed it on the 3d of August, 1846, on his way to California, from which we extract a description of some of the wonderful phenomena which he witnessed.

The mirage, a beautiful phenomenon, here displayed its wonderful illusions, in a perfection and with a magnificence surpassing any presentation of the kind I had previously seen. Lakes, dotted with islands and bordered by groves of gently waving timber, whose tranquil and limpid waves reflected their sloping banks and the shady islands in their bosoms, lay spread out before us, inviting us by their illusory temptations to stray from our path and enjoy their cooling shades and refreshing waters. These, fading away as we advanced, beautiful villas adorned with edifices, decorated with all the ornaments of suburban architecture, and surrounded by gardens, shaded walks, parks, and stately avenues, would succeed them, renewing the alluring temptations to repose by enticing the vision with more than Calypsan enjoyments or Elysian pleasures. These, also melting from our view, as those before, would give place to a vast city with countless columned edifices of marble whiteness, and studded with domes, spires, and turreted towers, rising upon the horizon of the plain, astonishing us with its stupendous grandeur and sublime magnificence. But it is in vain to attempt a description of these singular and extraor dinary phenomena. Neither prose nor poetry, nor the pencil of the artist can adequately portray their beauties. The whole distant view around, at this point, seemed like the creations of a sublime and gorgeous dream or the effect of enchantment.

As we moved onward, a member of our party in the rear called our attention to a gigantic moving object on our left, at an appa. rent distance of six or eight miles. It is very difficult to determine distances accurately on these plains. Your estimate is based upon the probable dimensions of an object, and unless you know what the object is, and its probable size, you are liable to great deception. The atmosphere frequently seems to act as a magnifier, so much so that I have often seen a raven, perched upon a low shrub or an undulation of the plain, answering to the outlines of a man on horseback. But this object was so enormously large, considering its apparent distance and its movement forward parallel with ours so distinct, that it greatly excited our wonder and curiosity.

About two o'clock P. M., we discovered through the smoky vapor, the dim outlines of the mountains before us, the foot of which was to terminate our day's march, if we were so fortunate as to reach it. But still we were a long and weary distance from it, and from the "water and grass "which we expected to find

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