oak-brush, the squaw-berry, and other scant growths, with here and there a tree casting its lone shadow on hill or in valley; a wire-grass swamp, a few acres of withered bunch-grass, and the lazily waving willows and wild-rose bushes, fringing the distant streams, the only green thing visible. Silence and desolation reign. A silence unbroken, save by the cricket's ceaseless chirp, the roar of the mountain torrent or the whir and twitter of the passing bird. A desolation of centuries, where earth seems heaven-forsaken, where Hermit Nature, watching, waiting, weeps and worships God amid eternal solitudes." (History of Utah, Vol. I., pages 325-6.) The Mormons whom your Salt Lake Correspondent admits had the territory of Utah almost exclusively to themselves for about twenty-five years, converted the desert wilderness described in the foregoing quotations into a fruitful land, and redeemed it from savagery to civilization. By the creation of an irrigation system they demonstrated that the desert lands of the intermountain region could be converted into fruitful fields, and thus became Pioneers, not alone of Utah, but of the entire intermountain region, and became founders of modern irrigation farming, which now is developing into a great national movement, that looks to the reclamation of an extent of country beside which the extent of ancient empires becomes insignificant; and happy millions will yet partake of the blessings first disclosed as possible by the example in irrigation set by the Mormon people. And all such silly falsehoods and misrepresentations as those uttered by your jaundice-minded correspondent, can never rob them of the high honor accorded them by the nation for the part they have performed in so great and notable and far reaching enterprises. Your correspondent represents himself as having lived in Utah for over twenty-five years; and also as having had ample opportunity to study the "Mormon system" and its fruits, and then says: "I am forced to join with other careful students in declaring that from a social, civil and moral standpoint, no language is strong enough to set forth the evil fruits of the "Mormon system." Based on polygamy, how could the system be otherwise than rotten? Its central idea of government being that of priesthood rule, how could it be otherwise than anti-American? Having been founded and organized by a man as corrupt and immoral as the multiplied statements of Joseph Smith's acquaintances and neighbors prove that he was, how could it be otherwise than mischievous and immoral in its tendencies and results?"