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Rh riding enables them to digest. Holcus saccharatum, or Chinese millet, succeeds where insufficient humidity is an obstacle to the sugar-cane. The fault of the vegetables here, as in California, is excessive size, which often renders them insipid; the Irish potato, however, is superior to that of Nova Scotia and Charleston; the onions are large and mild as those of Spain. The white carrot, the French bean, and the cucumber grow well, and the "multicaulis mania" has borne good fruit in the shape of cabbage. The size of the beets suggested in 1853 the project originated in France by Napoleon the Great: $100,000 were expended upon sugar-making machinery; the experiment, however, though directed by a Frenchman, failed, it is said, on account of the alkali contained in the root, and the Saints are accused of having distilled for sale bad spirit from the useless substance. The deserts skirting the Western Holy Land have also their manna; the leaves of poplars and other trees on the banks of streams distill, at divers seasons of the year, globules of honey-dew, resembling in color gum Arabic, but of softer consistence and less adhesiveness: the people collect it with spoons into saucers. Cotton thrives in the southern and southwestern part of Utah Territory when the winter is mild: at the meeting-place of waters near the Green and Grand Rivers that unite to form the Colorado, the shrub has been grown with great success.

The principal value of Utah Territory is its position as a great half-way station—a Tadmor in the wilderness—between the Valley of the Mississippi and the Western States, California and Oregon; it has thus proved a benefit to humanity. The Mormons, "flying from civilization and Christianity," attempted to isolate themselves from the world in a mountain fastness; they were foiled by an accident far beyond human foresight. They had retired to a complete oasis, defended by sterile volcanic passes, which in winter are blocked up with snow, girt by vast waterless and uninhabitable deserts, and unapproachable from any settled country save by a painful and dangerous march of 600—1000 miles. Presently, in 1850, the gold fever broke out on the Pacific sea-board; thousands of people not only passed through Utah Territory, but were also compelled to remain there and work for a livelihood. The transit received a fresh impulse in 1858 by the gold discovered at Pike's Peak, and in 1859 by the rich silver mines found in the Carson and Washoe Valleys, on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada. Carson Valley, which was settled by Colonel Reece in 1852, and colonized in 1855 by 500 Mormons, was soon cleared of Saints by the influx of prospectors and diggers, and the other El Dorados drew off much