splendor, employing 25,000 sailors and carrying 140,000 tons of every kind of produce and merchandise. These boats are valued at $12,ooo,ooo, and expend $1o,ooo,ooo annually, while the value of the merchandise that they transport in the course of a year from city to city and from one State to another, may be estimated roundly at $250,ooo,ooo. Of the lands watered by these great rivers, not one acre in ten is cultivated. What will it be like when the nine that remain are subjected to culture? Then 7,000 steamboats will be required to carry the products and the merchandise. The time is not far distant when on the banks of the Mississippi and the Ohio, from St. Louis and Cincinnati to New Orleans, there will be seen but a single unbroken village, surrounded with fair gardens and lovely fields. At another time I will speak to you in detail of, the immense resources of this country, which could with ease employ and nourish all the inhabitants of the British Isles, France, Germany, Belgium, Holland and Spain.
But I forget myself; I started to tell you of a recent and genuinely American occurrence. It has to do with the new Territory of Utah. In 18463 I found myself involved with a single companion in some very difficult and dangerous mountain passes. The character of the region appeared to me at that time very singular; its situation is different from that of any other section of North America. The summits of these precipitous and rocky mountains are covered with perpetual snows; the valleys are very narrow, sterile and arid; the earth and rocks are covered with bitter and saline incrustations ; no other vegetation is to be seen than sagebrush of large growth, sufficient in that region for firewood for the lone traveler in those parts. As soon as one is through these passages, always arid in summer and choked with snow through five months of the year, he comes into a lovely and very extensive valley, which is the only habit
3 This is probably a slip for 1841, when the Father did have an experience, like that here related, in the country now occupied by the Mormons.-See p. 303.