In 1848, nearly all the remaining members of the Church left the Missouri country in a succession of powerful bands, invigorated and enriched by their abundant harvests there; and that year saw fully established their Commonwealth of the New Covenant, the future State of DESERET.
I may not undertake to describe to you in a single lecture the Geography of Deseret, and its Great Basin. Were I to consider the face of the country, its military position, or its climate and its natural productions; each head, I am confident, would claim more time than you have now to spare me. For Deseret is emphatically a New Country; new in its own characteristic features, newer still in its bringing together within its limits the most inconsistent peculiarities of other countries. I cannot aptly compare it to any. Descend from the mountains, where you have the scenery and climate of Switzerland, to seek the sky of your choice among the many climates of Italy, and you may find, welling out of the same hills, the Freezing Springs of Mexico and the Hot Springs of Iceland, both together coursing their way to the Salt Sea of Palestine in the plain below. The pages of Malte Brun provide me with a less truthful parallel to it than those which describe the happy Valley of Rasselas or the Continent of Balnibarbi.
Let me then press on with my history, during the few minutes that remain for me.
Only two events have occurred to menace seriously the establishment at Deseret: the first threatened to destroy its crops, the other to break it up altogether.
The shores of the Salt Lake are infested by a sort of insect pest, which claims a vile resemblance to the locust of the Syrian Dead Sea. Wingless, dumpy, black, swollen-headed, with bulging eyes in cases like goggles, mounted upon legs of steel wire and clock-spring, and with a general personal appearance that justified the Mormons in comparing him to a cross of the spider on the buffalo, the Deseret cricket comes down from the mountains at a certain season of the year, in voracious and desolating myriads. It was just at this season, that the first crops of the new settlers were in the full glory of their youthful green. The assailants could not be repulsed. The Mormons, after their fashion, prayed and fought, and fought and prayed, but to no purpose. The "Black Philistines" mowed their way even with the ground, leaving it as if touched with an acid or burnt by fire.
But an unlooked for ally came to the rescue. Vast armies of bright birds, before strangers to the valley, hastened across the lake from some unknown quarter, and gorged themselves upon the well fatted enemy. They were snow white, with little heads and clear dark eyes, and little feet, and long wings, that arched in flight "like an angel's." At first the Mormons thought they were new enemies to plague them; but when they found them hostile only to the locusts, they were careful not to molest them in their friendly office, and to this end declared a heavy fine against all who should kill or annoy them with firearms. The gulls soon grew to be tame as the poultry, and the delighted little children learned to call them their pigeons. They disappeared every evening beyond the lake; but, returning with sunrise, continued their welcome visitings till the crickets were all exterminated.
This curious incident recurred the following year, with this variation, that in 1849, the gulls came earlier and saved the wheat crops from all harm whatever.
A severer trial than the visit of the cricket-locusts threatened Deseret in the discovery of the gold of California. It was due to a party of the Mormon battalion recruited on the Missouri, who on their way home, found employment at New Helvetia. They were digging a mill race there, and threw up the gold dust with their shovels. You all know the crazy fever that broke out as soon as this was announced. It infected every one through California. Where the gold was discovered, at Sutter's and around, the standing grain was left uncut; whites, Indians, and mustees, all set them to gathering gold, every other labor forsaken, as if the first comers could rob the casket of all that it contained. The disbanded soldiers came to the valley; they showed their poor companions pieces of the yellow treasure they had gained; and the cry was raised: "To California—To the Gold of Ophir, our brethren have discovered! To California!"
Some of you have perhaps come across the half ironic instruction of the heads of the Church, to the faithful outside the Valley:
"THE TRUE USE OF GOLD is for paving streets, covering houses, and making culinary dishes; and, when the Saints shall have preached the Gospel, raised grain, and built up cities enough, the Lord will open up the way for a supply of gold to the perfect satisfaction of His People. Until then, let them not be over-anxious, for the treasures of the earth are in the Lord's storehouse, and he will open the doors thereof when and where he pleases."—II. Gen. Epistle, 14.