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Show UTAH ARGENTIFERA. 179 and found it very palatable. Gulls and pelicans abound in places around the lake, feeding on the flies and worms. Captain Stansbury reports finding a blind pelican which had been fed by its companions and kept fat. At points where grassy marshes border the lake the buffalo gnats are numerous and troublesome. There are indications that buffalo were abundant in this basin a hundred years ago. The Indians say the Great Spirit changed them all to crickets! The latter were very destructive to the first crops of the Mormons, until the gulls came in immense flocks and devoured them. The Mormon his-torian in pious gratitude says: " There were no gulls in the country before the Mormons came." In the slang meaning of that word, this is on a par for facetiousness with that statement in the Book of Mor-mon : " Great darkness overspread the land : yea, darkness wherein a fire could not be kindled with the dryest wood." We next try a sail on the yacht. Several sail- boats are now run on the lake by various clubs ; ours only held ten persons besides the four sailors. A strong wind from the north- east enabled us to make eight miles an hour, the neat craft riding the waves like a sea- bird. But when we turned towards the point, and had to take the side waves, four of the passengers suddenly turned pale behind the gills. By heroic efforts and frequent recourse to a black bottle, we kept down our dinners, but at the end of two hours " chopping " were glad to get on solid ground again. At 6 P. M. dancing began, and the latest comers put through the night in that amusement. Almost every public occa-sion in the Far West begins or ends with a dance. Space fails me to describe in detail the rich mineral districts of southern Utah. Beaver County alone has a dozen districts and several hundred miners. The county contains almost every mineral useful to man silver, iron, copper, coal, kaolin, and fire- clay of most excellent quality. Withal, the climate is singularly mild and equable. The summers at Beaver City I found a little cooler than at Salt Lake : the winter much like that of middle Tennessee, only dryer. The fer-tile valleys there would yield provisions for 50,000 people ; and with the extension of the railroad to that point it will doubtless be the richest region of the South, the metropolis of southern Utah and northern Arizona. Utah now contains ninety mining districts; the mines and improvements are valued all the way from fifteen to thirty million dollars, and the annual yield of lead, silver, and gold has reached five millions. All this interest has been built up since 1869, by the work of those whom the Saints stigmatize as <( d d Gentiles,'' and whom apologists for Brighamcall " adventurers and carpet- baggers,'' |