Their first impressions of the valley, Lorenzo Young says, were most disheartening. But for the two or three cottonwood trees, not a green thing was in sight. And Brigham speaks almost pathetically of the destruction of the willows and wild roses growing on the banks of City Creek, destroyed because the channels must be changed, and leaving nothing to vary the scenery but rugged mountains, the sage brush and the sunflower. The ground was covered with millions of black crickets which the Indians were harvesting for their winter food. (_Ibid, page 262._) "When we arrived in this valley we found it a barren desert, and a barren desert it was. We saw no mark of the white man. We found a few naked Indians who would eat a pint of roasted crickets for their dinner." (Statement of Wilford Woodruff, "Utah Pioneers," page 24.) The late Apostle Erastus Snow, who, with Orson Pratt, was the first man of the pioneers to enter the valley, in a discourse during the celebration of the thirty-third anniversary of the entrance of the pioneers into the Salt Lake valley, says: "And when the Pioneers found it [this valley], it was well nigh purified by the lapse of time and the desolation of ages, and the wickedness of its ancient inhabitants was well nigh obliterated, though the curse of barrenness and desolation still existed. I remarked yesterday, on looking at the decorations of this building, that to make the work complete that part which so truthfully represents this desert land in 1847, the sagebrush and the other growth of the desert should be sprinkled with black crickets, and, perched in some prominent position, some gulls looking down eagerly upon them; which would remind us of those early days when the Pioneers and early settlers grappled with the difficulties of the desert land; when the untamed savage was scarcely an enemy or a hindrance in our pathway compared with the destructive winged insects, the crickets and grasshoppers which would come in myriads to devour the tender crops. For the first two seasons it seemed as though the crickets and grasshoppers would consume every green thing, and after they had commenced their depredations to such an extent that to all human appearance the last vestige of the products of the field and garden would be eaten up, large flocks of gulls came to the relief of the farmer, lighting down upon the fields and covering them as with a white sheet, and they fell to devouring the insects. When they had filled and gorged their stomachs, they would vomit them up and then fill themselves again, and again vomit, and thus they ate and devoured until the fields were cleared of those destructive insects, and the crops saved. * * * * Many doubted, as to whether we could subsist our colonies in this country at all, and whether grain would mature. James Bridger,