The Awakening of the Desert

by Julius Charles Birge

Continuing his story from time to time after occasional digressions he told of the return of their party over the Sierras Eastward, of their troubles with the Indians and of other hardships. Although in Mr. Brown's interesting volume on the Life of a Pioneer, written in later years, he makes no mention of the circumstances, yet he told me that when his little party had arrived at the north end of Great Salt Lake in the autumn of 1848, and had determined that it would be much safer to spend the winter in that valley than to cross the mountains so late in the season, they were led by friendly Indians to understand that good forage for their horses could be found at the southern end of the Lake; whereupon, as he told me, the party traveled the same course that we were then following, along the western base of the Wasatch Mountains. At a point several miles north of the present site of Salt Lake City they unexpectedly met two of their Mormon friends, whom they had neither seen nor heard from since leaving the Missouri River two years before. They were informed for the first time that Brigham Young and many Mormons had crossed the plains and the mountains in the preceding year, and had erected a stockade and settled at the south end of the lake. One member of Mr. Brown's party was astounded to learn that his mother, having crossed with one of the trains, was at that moment but 12 miles away and that she had driven a yoke of oxen the greater part of that long, tedious course, a duty made necessary by the heavy burdens which fell upon others. This was certainly a remarkable revelation to the weary travelers, who had supposed that they were alone in the middle of the continent.

Near the close of the day Brown and I reached the ranch of Peregrine Sessions, a pioneer Mormon and a man conspicuous in Mormon history, from whom the place was known as Sessions' settlement. As we rode up to the door, Mr. Brown said to me: "It was right here that we met our Mormon brothers who informed us concerning the new Salt Lake settlement." It was arranged that we should spend the night with Mr. Sessions, who during the evening gave a brief account of the perils and privations to which they were subjected on their journey and some incidents connected with the early days in Utah. During our evening's interview Mr. Brown described his first arrival at Salt Lake settlement, where he and his party found their friends living in brush sheds and dugouts, a few only having log cabins, their general condition being most discouraging. Such was the beginning of Salt Lake City.

We may now recall the fact that the settlement of Salt Lake City by the Mormons in 1847, and the discovery of gold in California in 1848, were the prime factors in the awakening of the Far West. Salt Lake Valley was an alkali desert declared to be absolutely hopeless by the early trappers and explorers. Its reclamation and cultivation by those religious exiles made it the only supply point for provisions on the long road to the newly discovered Sacramento gold fields, and saved many from starvation, to the profit of all concerned.

Mr. Sessions arrived in Salt Lake Valley in the middle of September, 1847, having conducted a company of fifty wagons, which closely followed the first train of Mormon pioneers conducted by Brigham Young. The Deseret News is authority for the statement that "Peregrine Sessions was the father of fifty-six children,"—a patriarch indeed.

It is true that the graphic yet ingenuously told story related by one of the discoverers of gold in California, one who carried to the States the first intelligence of that discovery, gave added interest to the visit that I soon made to those gold diggings, the fame of which had incited the first tide of transcontinental migration composed of hardy and reckless adventurers willing to undergo the trials and perils incident to such an expedition. These, with the Argonauts who sailed around by the Isthmus or Cape Horn, were the ones who first roused the latent energies of our Pacific coast territory.

SUTTER'S FORT BEFORE RESTORATION, SACRAMENTO. CALIF. SITUATED NEAR THE PLACE WHERE GOLD WAS FIRST DISCOVERED IN CALIFORNIA

There were a very few, however, who were attracted not by gold but by admiration for the sublime and beautiful in nature, especially through companionship with the noble trees and towering cliffs of the Sierras; and these men aided in revealing to the world the previously unwritten history of these formations. Among them were John Muir, the shepherd, naturalist, and author, and Galen Clark, the pioneer and discoverer of the Mariposa Grove. I appreciated Galen Clark's homage for nature when, after spending a night at his cabin, built in 1857, he personally led me among those monarchs of the forest, stating the heights of various trees, and for my satisfaction assisted in measuring the trunks of many; one of them was 101 feet in circumference. He referred to them in affectionate terms, expressing the hope that they might be spared from the lumberman's axe.

It was still later when I first visited Muir's haunts in the Yosemite; George Anderson, a Scotch ship-carpenter, had spent the summer in drilling holes into the granite face of the upper cliff of the great South Dome, driving in it iron pins with ropes attached. Two or three persons were tempted to scale with the aid of these ropes the heights, which are nearly a perpendicular mile above the valley. I, too, was inclined to make the venture. I proceeded in advance, followed by Anderson, who had in tow a young San Franciscan with a connecting rope around the young man's waist. It was a dizzy but inspiring ascent and I was pleased to reach the top twenty minutes in advance of my pursuers. While spending an hour upon the summit, I discovered on its barren surface, a lady's bracelet. On showing it to Anderson, he said: "You are the third party who has made this ascent. I pulled up a young woman recently but she never mentioned any loss except from nausea." Returning to Merced, I observed a vigorous young woman wearing a bracelet similar to the one I had found. The lady proved to be Miss Sally Dutcher of San Francisco, who admitted the loss and thankfully accepted the missing ornament. A letter to me from Galen Clark states that he assisted in Miss Dutcher's ascent, Anderson preceding with a rope around his waist connecting with Miss Dutcher; also that she was certainly the first and possibly the last woman who made the ascent. These ascents are now forbidden, but the natural attractions of the State of California have drawn to it a vast revenue from transient nature lovers.

But to return to the hospitable home in Utah.