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.
But, while many evils beset agriculture in Utah Territory, grazing is comparatively safe, and may be extended almost ad libitum. The valleys of this land of Goshen supply plentiful pasturage in the winter; as spring advances cattle will find gamma and other grasses on the benches, and as, under the influence of the melting sun, the snow-line creeps up the hills, flocks and herds, like the wild graminivorants, will follow the bunch-grass, which, vivified by the autumnal rains, breeds under the snow, and bears its seed in summer. In the basin of the Green River, fifty miles south of Fillmore City, is a fine wool-producing country 7000 square miles in area. Even the ubiquitous sage will serve for camels. As has been mentioned, Durhams, Devons, and Merino tups have found their way to Great Salt Lake City, and the terrible milk-sickness[1] of the Western States has not.
In 1860 the Valley of the Great Salt Lake alone produced 306,000 bushels of grain; of which about 17,000 were oats. Lieutenant Gunnison, estimating the average yield of each plowed acre at 2000 lbs. (33½ bushels), a fair estimate, and "drawing the meat part of the ration, or one half," from the herds fed elsewhere, fixes the maximum of population in Utah Territory at 4000 souls to a square mile, and opines that it will maintain with ease one million of inhabitants.
Timber, I have said, is a growing want throughout the country; the "hair of the earth-animal" is by no means luxuriant. Great Cotton-wood Kanyon is supposed to contain supplies for twenty years, but it is chiefly used for building purposes. The
- ↑ A fatal spasmodic disease produced in the Western States by astringent salts in the earth and water: it first attacks cattle, and then those who eat the infected meat or drink the milk. Travelers tell of whole villages being destroyed by it.
