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. 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 saleratus 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.
