Why, bless your soul, what did President Young know about Utah, at that early day? We did not know that there was even a lump of coal in existence in the land. I myself passed the first fall and winter after our entrance into this valley hauling wood out of Mill Creek canyon and Parley's canyon; and during that fall and winter I hauled forty loads of wood with my oxen and wagon out of these canyons. Every load I cut and hauled diminished the supply of wood for fuel for the future; and I said to myself: What will we do when the wood is all gone? How will we live here when we can't get any more fuel, for it is rapidly going? I followed that pursuit until it took me three days in the mountains with my ox-team and wagon, to get a load of wood for winter fuel; and what were we to do? Yet President Young said, "This is the place."
Well, ordinarily, our judgment and our faith would have been tried, in the decision of the president, if we had not implicit confidence in him. If we had not known that he was the mouthpiece of God, that he was the real and legitimate successor of the Prophet Joseph Smith in the Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we would have doubted his wisdom and we would have faltered in our faith in his promise and word; but no, we believed him, and we stayed; and so far as I am concerned, I am here yet; and I propose to remain here as long as the Lord wants me to stay. And what has developed?
Our good friends from the east used to come out here in the early days, and upbraid us. They said: "Why, it is the fulfilment of the curse of God upon you. You have been driven away from the rich lands of Illinois and Missouri into a desert, into a salt land."
I said: "Yes, we have salt enough here to save the world, thank God, and we may find use for it by and by."
Well, before the wood gave out entirely in the mountains, we discovered coal up here in Summit county, and then we began to discover it all along the mountains here, and we kept on discovering it, until at last we have learned that we have coal enough in Utah to furnish fuel for the whole world for a hundred years, if they want to come and get it. We have it right here, any amount of it; and they haven't got that in California; they come up here to get their coal.
We have discovered that this country was really the gold-mine country of the world; that here abounded silver as well as gold in greater abundance than in California. We have discovered now that some of our mountains here are practically made of copper, and men are hewing copper out of the mountains by millions of tons, so to speak, and coining it in the way of business into money; and thank the Lord, we do not have to go to Liverpool for the salt we use in making butter. We have it right here, just as good and pure as the best they can fetch from England or anywhere else in the world; and this salt land has proven to be a boon, a consolation and a blessing beyond all power of description.
When the army came out here, in 1858, we wanted some bullets to go out and meet General Johnston and his forces that were coming in—not to kill them; we did not want the bullets to kill them; we just wanted the bullets to scare them with. Some of the boys went out here into the mountains with a pick and shovel, and they dug up lead, impregnated somewhat with silver. They brought it in, improvised a little furnace and ran out a few tons of lead. I had the honor of being associated with that little company of men, and I brought home with me some thirty or forty pounds of lead that we just quarried out of the hill with a pick and shovel.
When I rode up to the office here, to report to President Young my return from my mission over three years, the army was approaching, and he said to me: "Well, Joseph, have you got a horse?"
I said, "Yes, sir."
"Have you got a gun?"