OCR Text |
Show PBODUCTIONS- UTAH VALLEY. 141 of the mountains, beyond which the water does not reach. The extensive plains between the mountain ranges, although composed of soil nearly equal in fertility, are at present useless for the purposes of agriculture, from the want of water. The smallness of the area suitable for cultivation is, however, compensated by the prodigious productiveness of the soil, which, together with the climate, is peculiarly favourable to the growth of wheat, barley, oats, and all the cereal grains. I brought with me, for distribution, a portion of a crop of wheat, which had produced, upon three and one-half acres of ground, the enormous yield of one hundred and eighty bushels, from a single bushel of seed. In situations peculiarly favourable for watering, the average yield of all lands properly cultivated may be very safely estimated at forty bushels. Maize, or In* dian corn, has not as yet proved so successful, owing to the early frosts occasioned by the vicinity of the mountains; but beets, turnips, melons, and especially potatoes, exceed in increase even the most sanguine anticipations. The quality of the latter is fully equal, if not superior, to the best Nova Scotia varieties. On the eastern side of the Salt Lake Valley, the land susceptible of irrigation stretches along the western base of the Wahsatch Mountains, from about eighty miles north of Salt Lake City to about sixty south of it, the latter portion embracing, toward its terminus, the fertile valley of Lake Utah. This is a beautiful sheet of pure fresh water, thirty miles in length, and about ten in breadth, surrounded on three sides by rugged mountains and lofty hills, with a broad grassy valley sloping to the water's edge, opening to the northward. Through this opening flows the river Jordan, by which its waters are discharged into the Great Salt Lake. The lake abounds in fine fish, principally speckled trout, of great size and exquisite flavour, which afford sustenance to numerous small bands of Utahs. The Jordan, in its passage, cuts through a cross range of mountains that divides the two valleys, making a deep cafion, in which are rapids. At most seasons of the year a skiff can be safely floated down these boiling waters, if managed with sufficient skill to avoid striking the projecting rocks. The fall continues abrupt for one mile, and the river could here be led along the escarpment of the western hills as far as to a point opposite the mouth of the Little Cotton- wood, and thence on a curve to Spring Point, at the north end of the Oquirrh Mountain, thus probably bringing under irrigation about eighty square miles of fertile land. |