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.
[157] 100 grammes of the freshly crystallized salt gave,
| Water | 73·0 |
| Protoxide of manganese | 08·9 |
| Alumina | 04·0 |
| Sulphuric acid | 18·0 |
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.
[158] In the United States the bushel of wheat or clover-seed is 60 lbs.; of corn, barley, and rye, 56 lbs.; of oats, 35-36 lbs.
[159] The yield in Egypt varies from 25 to 150 grains for one planted.
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.