{"collection":"mor","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/mor/tfd/chap06.htm","path":"mor/tfd/chap06.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/mor/tfd/chap06.htm","text":"\"The desert shall rejoice and blossom like a rose.\"\nBible\nA STRING of valleys, rich of soil, but scant of water, stretched from north to \nsouth in this territory from Salt Lake City to Saint George. It was the policy of \nthese people to occupy the land in settlements similar to those of the French Canadians. \nNo doubt the idea was born of the observations, made in earlier days, by the Mormon \nleaders who were mostly from the New England States. They were probably visitors, \nat times, across the border from New Hampshire or Vermont, and so knew how the French \nhabitant was housed in villages with their farms farther afield. To their labor \nthey went forth in the morning, to return, at the call of the \"Angelus,\" from their \nfields to their settlement-firesides at night.\nThis made for social life, and suited well the gregarious and garrulous genius of \nthe French race stock that settled that eastern portion of the great Canadian Dominion. \nIt did more. It gave the religious leader and teacher, the priest of the Roman Church, \nthe power and opportunity to reach, by ready speech, the people whose easy assembling \nwas possible, after work hours, since they were village residents.\nThere were no solitary farmhouses, often out of sight of a neighbor, and so out \nof mind, touch and sympathy; such as we see on the wide plains of the Dakotas of \nthe North-West; or could have seen, in those early days, on the prairies of Illinois \nor the woodlands of Indiana or Ohio.\nSo these Utah settlers occupied town and hamlets, and the meeting house, the center \nof its life, was always well filled by adjacent residents. By every water course, \nsmall or large, near or distant, from the hills which supplied these rills, these \nsettlements were formed. Each was fully organized and often incorporated, having \nmayor, council, wards; like any city.\nThe lands adjacent were divided up among the people so that each family head, and \nthose acting as heads of or for families, could have the proverbial forty acres \nand a mule, a sufficient start in life on the soil. How sensible, stable, and socialistic \nthis was, is seen in the contentment and progress of these settlers from the first \ndays. Right speedily the ground tickled with the hoe, laughed with a harvest, everywhere \nthat the lavish waters of the towering Wasatch or Orquirreh Ranges could be diverted.\nThe silver streams of embryo wealth to a desert-land came, in torrents, down the \nrough granite studded canyons, to waste their life giving power by falling into \nthe Utah Jordan, and then rolling south into Utah Lake, the modern Sea of Galilee \nwith towns around its watery shores.\nBut industry harnessed these waters as the Eastern settlers did their mill-streams \nby dams, to make them commercially profitable and powerful. So the Mormon people \nby canals cut to suit the contour of the land brought water to every little patch \nof arable soil. The fair clime and genial sun of Utah, mountain-sheltered from the \nBorean blasts that swept the prairie wastes to the west, made farming both a delight \nand a success.\nI have never seen finer wheat than the symmetrical, golden kernels of grain in the \nUtah Valley. And the yield was most generous when properly watered; forty and fifty \nbushels being common. What toothsome loaves the housewives made from this wheat, \nmilled by Utah's Cooperative Institution.\nThe fruit of these settlements was on a par with the grain. Peaches, especially, \nwere finely-flavored and were generally raised. Almost every sloping shed-roof, \nin the season, was covered with cut peaches drying in the sun, for the market at \nhome and abroad. In fact, these people, who knew the keen bite of poverty for the \nfew first years, soon had all that the mouth and stomach asked for, in the way of \nvaried foods.\nCattle, too, well-fed, throve and helped the dairy to nourish, and the meat market \nto be well supplied.\nI think that you can see the character and appearance of these settlements. The \nborders of each incorporated town touched those of the succeeding one, as you travelled \nsouth, so in one sense you were never out of town.\nThis applied to the good land districts above. Of course there was much benchland, \nsagebrush areas, for which water could not be procured, being either too expensive \nto grade to the land in need, or there was not sufficient dependable water to be \nhad to warrant the laying out of a settlement. So Utah still had its waste places, \nand the silences belonging to all waste places.\nThese valley settlements began around the Great Salt Lake, the main city of the \nSaints being the principal one. They then spread generally southward, over the divides \nseparating these valleys of the mountains and so continued to the limit of the territory \nwhere it slipped over the rim of a basin, to lower altitudes, in northern Arizona, \nat St. George.\nAt this latter and remote settlement, there was a sanitarium of climate, whose soft \nmildness in winter made it a resort for those who could afford the expense of a \nlong stage trip in search of a change of season and the restoration of broken health.\nI rode about the towns that fringed the shores of Utah Lake and as I looked at its \nwaters, quiet now, and the next hour swept by the torrential winds that came out \nof Spanish Fork Canyon as though shot from a high-powered gigantic air-gun, I thought \nof the blue Sea of Galilee, and the tempestuous night passage by Christ and his \ndisciples.\nDown the long stretch from Payson, the town at the south end of this fresh water \ninland sea, to Nephi beneath the lofty crest and ancient snows of Mount Nebo, overlooking \nits quiet streets, one travels through little settlements of the types, which I \nhave already described; occupied by a class of small farmers, all doing well, but \nnot one of them rich.\nThe territory of my day was a land of little-landers and small fortunes; the capitalist \nwas nosing in, but he was a gentile, or a foreign investor, who was after mines \nand commodities, and fought shy of fanning and soil investments.\nMount Nebo, whose height was unclimbed by any Utah prophet, was the dividing range \nthat intervened between the settlements of San Pete Valley, filled with Scandinavian \nsettlers, and the main valley by Parowan, down which the railroad of this modern \nage passes on its way from Salt Lake to Los Angeles.\nI left the railroad at a little south of Payson, and from thence all my travelling \nwas by stage or canvas covered wagon, or on the broncho of that region.\nI found the people homely, happy in their way, self-satisfied as to their sainthood \nand church life, but quite unintellectual. I do not mean that they were more ignorant \nthan the usual rural population of the West of that day; they had a lot of homely \nwisdom and quaint sayings, with the usual horse-trading cuteness and wit; but as \nto thinking for themselves they were not remarkable, for like many a church folk \nin many a clime, they left all their thinking for the professional thinkers and \ncreed makers; and so like sheep, satisfied with their shepherds, they listened to \nthe voice of their authorities and acquiesced in all their demands.\nI have sat in many a cosy parlor, with the visitor's chair in evidence, and enjoyed \nthe hospitality and good will of industrious house-wives. I saw very little evidence \nof married unhappiness, or of a pronounced polygamy. Of course it was there, and \nsome of the homesteads gave ocular evidence of plural wifehood with separate doors \nand windows of section-made adobe houses visible from the roadside.\nThe children were barefooted, browned, and healthy. They were wild-eyed and shy \nwhen questioned by a stranger, but very little more so than those of any rural people \nwho see but little of the outside bustling world of commerce.\nSurely these settlements, utilizing these broad acres, otherwise idle, were a better \nproduct, despite these peculiarities, than a waste of sage and sand given over to \nhordes of coyotes, the prowling bear and wildcat.","title":"Chapter VI: The Valley Settlements","type":"page"}