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Show 170 WESTERN WILDS. contains three of the richest mining districts in the West, and a dozen more which promise equal richness when developed. Hence the agri-cultural ( Mormon) population is small, while the Gentile miners have increased rapidly; hence, " too, this is the first, and as yet the only, county in the Territory to pass under Gentile control, and is known in our political literature as the " Republic of Tooele." Tooele City, the county seat,, and only considerable town, was long inhabited by the most fanatical Mormons in Utah ; and when, in 1870, the opening of mines first set the tide of Gentile travel flowing through the place, they resisted change with stubborn tenacity. At length Mr. E. S. Foote, now representative elect from the county, ventured to set up a Gentile hotel ; but they led him a merry dance for a year or two. The city council raised his license every quarter, until it took one- fifth or more of his receipts to pay it ; and every Gentile who smoked a cigar, ate a dinner, or stayed over night at Foote's, was putting from ten cents to a dollar in the city treasury. Still he pulled through ; one after another came, and now the flourishing Gentile colony in Tooele have church, school, and social hall of their own, and the young Mormons welcome the change. When the county offices passed into Gentile hands late in 1874, the old Mormons seemed to expect nothing less than ruin and confiscation, and are yet scarcely recovered from their amazement. Eight miles beyond Tooele is Stockton, the " lead camp of Utah." Most of its mines yield from $ 20 to $ 40 in silver, and from a thousand to fourteen hundred pounds of lead per ton. Hence the ore works almost as easily as metallic lead melts ; and though long considered the slowest, as it was the oldest, mining town in Utah, with more capital and cheaper transportation, Stockton is steadily growing in importance. Here we enter Rush Valley, an oval some fifteen by thirty miles in extent, with a water- system of its own, and cut off from the Great Salt Lake by a causeway some 800 feet high. Twenty years ago the center and lowest point of this valley was a rich meadow, and included in a government reservation six miles square ; now the center of that meadow is twenty feet under water, and a crystal lake eight by four miles in extent covers most of what was the reservation. Such is the change consequent on the aqueous increase of late years in this strange country. Three deep caftons break out westwardly from the Oquirrh. In the southern one, known as East Cafion, " horn- silver," or chloride, was discovered in August, 1870. In three months a thousand men were at work in that district. Bowlders were often found lined with chlo-ride of silver, which yielded from $ 5,000 to $ 20,000 per ton. Ophir |