Page:The Overland Monthly Volume 5 Issue 3.djvu/74



and unfamiliar with the processes of irrigation, by which it was necessary to grow their crops: which fact, together with the ravages of the crickets, resulted in but a moderate harvest for 1848. In 1849, the benefits of a larger experience were felt: the crops were abundant, and for the first time the prospect of starvation ceased to haunt the hardy pioneers.

From that time, although the crops have several times been in large part destroyed by the grasshoppers, an ample supply for their own wants, and for furnishing the markets of the adjoining Territories, has always rewarded the labors of the Utah farmers. With the excitement consequent upon the discovery of gold in California, sprang up a large migration across the continent. The worn and weary seekers for the new El Dorado found, at the City of the Saints, reasonable supplies of what they

especially required. Their thin and footsore cattle were exchanged for fresh animals, and vegetables in abundance, with fresh meat, recruited the health of the

future millionaires. California is to-day richer by thousands of its most valued and cherished lives, from the existence of this half-way house upon the desert.

The moderate abundance of this world's goods acquired by the Saints, has been gained by the hardest and most persistent labor. It is the triumph of Muscle over the hostile powers of Nature. Few are aware of the vast labor necessary to reclaim the stubborn wastes of the Great Basin. Water is carried for miles to reach a small tract, possessing a soil of sufficient strength tomatureacrop. The surface must be brought to a uniform grade, to make practicable the flow of water over its entire area, and the crop must be watered at intervals of one or two weeks during the season. It is not too much to say that had it not been for the religious fanaticism, which assembled and banded together the Mormon

people in this locality, the country would have remained a desert for generations. Even since the advent of the Railroad, and the consequent opening of the country, there is not, so far as we are aware, a single Gentile farmer in the Territory. The fertile lands of our North-western States, and of California and Oregon, are as yet too cheap and abundant to warrant our settlers in seeking a home in the parched and barren wastes of Utah. The average size of a Utah farm will not exceed ten acres, and upon this it is necessary to expend as much labor as would be required to thoroughly cultivate fifty acres in California or Illinois.

The Mormons reached Salt Lake Valley in an utterly impoverished condition. The cash capital of the entire community would not probably have exceeded $1,000. The California migration furnished them a market for their surplus products; but, as they had but small use for money, they preferred taking of the miners instead something which they could either eat, drink, or wear, and not procurable at home. As they increased in numbers and means, merchants established themselves among them, thus enabling them to use their small stores of money in the purchase of needed supplies. Their great distance from market, and the small proportion of their crops which would bear transportation, have, however, at all times made money extremely scarce, and have led to the perpetration of a complicated and often amusing system of barter. Hundreds of farmers, living in reasonably comfortable circumstances, and having large families to clothe and educate, will not see a dollar in money for years. Such a farmer wishes to purchase a pair of shoes for his wife. He consults the shoemaker, who avers his willingness to furnish the same for one load of wood. He has no wood, but sells a calf for a quantity of adobes, the adodes for an order on the merchant payable in goods, and