foot of the Rocky Mountains. They carried out this project in 1847, penetrated into the desert some 1,200 miles, and founded a new city on the banks of the Great Salt lake, at the foot of a lofty chain of mountains forming a portion of the eastern limits of the Great basin. Brigham Young, Smith's successor as prophet and chief, was their leader in this long and painful march.
The valley of the Great basin is about 5oo miles long from north to south, and 350 from east to west. It is formed by the Sierra Madre bounding it on the east, and by the Goose creek and Humboldt Mountains on the west. Utah Territory, thus occupied by the Mormons, contains in all 187,()23 square miles. (The lake, which is now only seventy miles long and thirty-five wide, probably filled, at
a remote epoch, the whole valley. On all sides, on the slopes of the mountains, at a uniform height, are traces which water alone could have made.) In 1841 I traversed much of this valley in my rambles in the Rocky Mountains. The country was then wooded and agreeable, watered by springs and streams, winding through the valley. Since the Mormon emigration the forests have disappeared on the slopes of the hills and mountains, and, as the snows are more exposed to the rays of the sun and melt quicker, the springs dry up, and the streams give scarcely water enough in the spring to irrigate the cultivated fields and supply the domestic animals.
Salt Lake City contains at present 15,000 inhabitants. They are mostly English, Scotch and Swedes. Hardly one fourth of the Mormons are Americans by birth. They are scattered up and down in the villages and towns of all the plains and valleys of Utah, so called from an Indian tribe of that region. The Territory is bounded on the north by Oregon, on the west by California, on the east by the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and on the south by New Mexico. The total number of the inhabitants of the Territory is less than 5o,ooo, although the Mormon leaders,