Page:History of Utah.djvu/374

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or summer, and during winter the snow-fall is not enough to furnish irrigating streams in sufi&cient num- ber and volume. Throughout the valley, vegetation is scant except in favored spots. With the exception of the Santa Clara River in the south-west, the Green River in the east, the Grand and other branches of the Colorado in the south and east, the streams all discharge into lakes or are lost in the alkali soil of the bottom-lands. On the hillsides bunch-grass is plentiful the year round, and in winter there is pas- ture in the canons. Around Salt Lake the soil is poor ; in the north and east are narrow tracts of fertile land; toward the valleys of the Jordan and Tooele, sepa- rated by the Oquirrh Range, and on the banks of the Timpanogos and San Pete, is soil of good quality, that yielded in places from sixty to a hundred bushels of grain to the acre.

The Jordan and Timpanogos furnished good water- power, and on the banks of the latter stream was built a woollen-mill that ranked as the largest fac- tory of the kind west of the Missouri River. In the Green River basin, immense deposits of coal were known to exist, and the Iron Mountains near Little Salt Lake were so called from the abun- dance of ore found in their midst. Other valuable minerals were afterward discovered, among them being gold, silver, copper, zinc, lead, sulphur, alum, and borax; the waters of Great Salt Lake were so densely impreg- nated that one measure of salt was obtained from five of brine.^

In the streams were fish of several varieties;^ in

^ An analysis of the mineral matter forty years ago showed 97.8 per cent of chloride of sodium, 1.12 of sulphate of lime, .24: of magnesium, and .23 of sulphate of soda. LinforiKs Route from Liverpool, 101. The specific grav- ity of the water is given by L. D. Gale, in Stansbury^s Expedition to O. S. Lake, at 1.117. Out of 22.422 parts of solid matter Gale found 20.196 of common salt, 1.834 of soda, .252 of magnesium, and of chloride of calcium a trace. See also Sloan's Utah Gazetteer, 1884, 177-8; Hist. Nev., 11, this series. In chap. i. of that vol. is a further description of the great basin, its topography, climate, soil, springs and rivers, fauna and flora.

^ ' The angler can choose his fish either in the swift torrents of the canons, where the trout delights to live, or in the calmer currents on the plains.