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Show Page 193 president of the United States, to be named "Fillmore." In 1851, "Utah" rolled across the map as far as the present western limit of Nevada. In the middle of the 1851 map lies a stretch of lava rock and alkali, tortured by towering dust storms, a country where rivers disappear from sight - the Pahvant Valley. It took Brigham Young and his engineers six days to reach this valley from Salt Lake, and on October 28, Orson began laying out the site for a new territorial capital, a city which would hug small streams from the eastern mountains and gaze out at desolate cinder cones to the west. This sandy little valley was a fitting site for the legislative seat of the Great Basin; only a few days later, on November 15, Orson Pratt was elected a member of that first territorial legislature west of the Missouri River - a representative from Salt Lake City to the capital city that was still 14 only a mirage in the desert. Orson wintered for the first time in Salt Lake City that year. Too late to do any farming and destitute of any other means of support, Orson advertised a lecture program to begin in December in the lower room of the sandstone Council House on Fourth South Street. His subject would be astronomy, and, to his gratification, the house was full. Not accustomed to speaking of his secular interests in public, he apparently showed a little diffidence, for the Deseret News gave his performance a mixed "review": "Professor Pratt's lecture on astronomy on the 15th instant was as numerously attended, as the Representatives Hall would permit; and we are pleased that he has consented...to the publication of the same in this paper. Though this was the Professor's first attempt at lecturing, on this subject; the lovers of truth will require no more apology for its awkwardness, than the work itself does for its praise; - it speaks for itself." 15 Orson's friend, George Watt, took up lecturing on phonology, and together .-t,~„ nnn^,iot-oH t-he series through the winter - unfortunately, this helped |
