islands of the sea, to make collections of the choicest seeds and fruits, or anything else that can serve for the embellishment of this garden. By the first plan the city contained 135 blocks; since then there have been added 65 blocks on the east and 6o on the west of the city. The University place is a mile square.
It is barely three years since the first house was built in this city and to-day there are several thousand comfortable houses, built of sun-dried bricks, and they have an abundance of all the necessaries of life. In the vicinity of the city there are a great number of springs of all temperatures, mineral, sulphurous and pure water. The fields have to be irrigated to render them productive. The city lies twentytwo miles southeast of the Great Salt lake. Southward from it, at a distance of fifty miles, are Utah lake and valley, where the Mormons have built the city of Provo on the bank of a river which bears the same name. The water of this lake is pure; it is eight miles by four and abounds in fish. A hundred miles south of this valley a colony of some 200 families have settled in a place called San Pete, where ruins have been found covered with hieroglyphics, and a mountain, strange to say, of rock salt. While I was at St. Mary's, among the Flatheads, in 1844-1845, I sent several times to this mountain for salt.
For five months of the year there is no communication with the north, east or west, by reason of the snow, which renders the passage of the mountains impracticable. The capital of the Mormons is I I 1 ° west of Greenwich.
Such is the change that has come over this desert in so short a time, and such the spot chosen by these new sectarians for a shelter against the tyranny and persecutions that other sectarians have brought upon them. In the midst of the desert they hake added a new star to the grand and beautiful American constellation. The Mormon sect has not been in existence thirty years. Already they have 200,000 converts or adepts, all of whom propose to go out and join their Utah brethren. The locality is well chosen, and will