Page:The Overland Monthly Volume 5 Issue 3.djvu/73

 ple supply of fruit and vegetables for family use, from their own gardehs. Rented property is extremely rare; in no city of the world do so large a proportion of the people own the houses in which they live. The size of the lots causes the city to cover an area probably ten times as great as an ordinary city of the same population.

In a country where, for half the year, rain is nearly unknown, a most delightful feature is the abundant supply of water in every part of the city. On each side of every street flows a stream of pure, crystal water, fresh from the melting snows of the mountains. The canals, for the distribution of the water, were first constructed by a general tax. The water is furnished to all without charge, except an annual tax of about $1 per lot, which is usually paid in labor by the parties immediately interested in the water supply, and is solely for the purpose of keeping the canals and ditches in repair.

The city presents the appearance of a vast garden, the scattered houses being embowered in luxuriant forests of fruittrees—principally the peach and apple. Ornamental trees are planted along both sides of the streets, beside the watercourses. Outside the city plat, several thousand acres are laid out into five and ten-acre farms, owned and cultivated by people residing in the city.

Salt Lake City, as has already been stated, was founded on the 24th day of July, 1847. Utah was then a portion of the Mexican Empire. The pioneers made their first camp on a slight eminence near the present residence of Brigham Young, and, within a few hours after their arrival, had unloaded their plows, tools, and seed- grain, and were plowing the land for the first crop ever raised in the Great Basin. A small piece of wheat —about two acres—was sowed, near the present site of the theatre, on the following day. The seed grain and potatoes, brought in the wagons from Council Bluffs, were soon in the ground, and the erection of a fort was commenced. This was for protection against the Indians, and was formed by building a considerable number of small adode houses around a square, within which the cattle and horses of: the people were secured.

Late in the autumn of the same year, several thousand people followed the pioneers into the valley. They were further reinforced by the arrival of the "Mormon Battalion," a body of some five hundred soldiers, serving in the army during the Mexican war, who had been mustered out of the service in southern California, at the cessation of hostilities, and marched thence to the Salt Lake Valley. The ensuing winter and spring were seasons of great and often terrible privation: the entire community were put upon light rations, and the utmost effort on the part of the authorities was required to prevent the starving people from devouring their supplies of seed- grain, upon the preservation of which hinged their future prosperity. Many people lived for weeks upon wild roots and the hides of animals. A supply of seed-grain was thus saved, and a considerable area of land sown in the spring of 1848. Their crops were soon attacked by myriads of large crickets, which swarmed from the mountains. The entire population rallied and fought, in every manner, these hungry invaders, but with only moderate success, until they were reinforced by a vast army of sea-gulls, which, tempted by the prospect of a feast of such delicacy and abundance, came from the islands of the Great Salt Lake. More by the effortsof the gulls than by those of the people was the cricket army defeated, which result all loyal and devout Mormons attribute to a direct interposition of Providence in their behalf. The settlers were farmers from the Eastern States,