July 6.—Feel a little apprehension about something to eat. My credit is all right here, but there is no competition, and prices are therefore very high. Ice, however, is still firm. This would be a good ice-cream country if there were any demand, but the country is so sparsely settled that a man feels as lonesome here as a green-backer at a presidential election. Ate a pound of cotton waste soaked in machine oil, to-day. There is nothing left for to-morrow but ice-water and an old pocket-book for dinner. Looks as though we might have snow.
July 7.—This is a good, cool place to spend the summer if provisions were more plenty. I am wearing a seal-skin undershirt with three woolen overshirts and two bear-skin vests, to-day, and when the dew begins to fall, I have to put on my buffalo ulster to keep off the night air. I wish I was home. It seems pretty lonesome here since the other boys died. I do not know what I will get for dinner to-morrow, unless the neighbors bring in something. A big bear is coming down the hatchway, as I write. I wish I could eat him. It would be the first square meal for two months. It is, however, a little mixed whether I will eat him or he eat me. It will be a cold day for me if he—————
Here the diary breaks off abruptly, and from the chewed up appearance of the book, we are led to entertain a horrible fear as to his safety.
THE REVELATION RACKET IN UTAH.
OUR esteemed and extremely connubial contemporary, the Deseret News, says in a recent editorial: