But however annoying it may be to Mormon traducers, the day is gone by when their fulminations can be accepted as sober truth. Mormonism is no longer isolated from the world. It is in daily contact with the great stream of travel which crosses the continent, in which stream is to be found some of the first and greatest characters of our own country and of the world; not merely the seekers of pleasure, or the restless curious; but educators, literati, public lecturers, editors, scientists, and statesmen. Attracted by the wonderful things they have heard of Utah and the Mormons, they stop to inquire, they meet with unexpected conditions, with facts undreamed of, they investigate, are convinced that the world has been misled in the impressions it has formed concerning the Mormon faith and the Mormon people; and thus they become witnesses against the traducers of that maligned people. Our traducers may not like this, but it is true. They have made lies their refuge, and under falsehood have they hid themselves; but their bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it, and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it. This much in general. Now to be more specific; and especially to cover in the evidence I quote the silly attempt of your Salt Lake correspondent "M" to deny credit to the Mormons for having redeemed a desert and given a wilderness to civilization. Your correspondent refers to the credit accorded the Mormons for this as "an old chestnut" which has been laid on the shelf years ago here in the West, because there is no truth in it! "There never was any barren desert," he says, "in this valley, for it has always been one of the best watered, most easily cultivated and productive valleys west of the Mississippi!" It is rather an unfortunate circumstance that a man who claims to have been a careful student of Mormonism and who has lived for over twenty-five years in Utah, should include in his criticism of the Journal's representative's article an untruth so palpable, a falsehood so easy of refutation, a statement which so bluntly comes in contact with the common knowledge of all the people of the United States. How the Salt Lake Valley was regarded by the pioneers who came into it in 1847 may be learned from the following quotation from their utterances: "My mother was heart-broken because there were no trees to be seen. I do not remember a tree that could be called a tree." Statement of Clara Decker Young, one of the women of the first pioneer company. (Bancroft's History of Utah, page 261.) "The ground was so dry that they found it necessary to irrigate it before plowing, some plows having been broken." (_Ibid._)