It is not only in water and verdure that Utah is naturally poor. On the mining-map of the States, the countries that lie around Utah--Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Montana--are one blaze of yellow, and blue, and red, colored from end to end with the tints that are used to denote the existence of precious metals. Utah is blank at present--blank, the Mormons say, by nature; Gentiles say, merely through the absence of survey; and they do their best to circumvent mother nature. Every fall the “strychnine” party raise the cry of gold discoveries in Utah, in the hope of bringing a rush of miners down to Salt Lake City, too late for them to get away again before the snows begin. The presence of some thousands of broad-brimmed rowdies in Salt Lake City, for a winter, would be the death of Mormonism, they believe. Within the last few days, I am told that prospecting parties have found “pay dirt” in City Canyon, which, however, they had first themselves carefully “salted” with gold dust. There is coal at the settlement at which we breakfasted on our way from Weber River to Salt Lake; and Stenhouse tells us that the only difference between the Utah coal and that of Wales is, that the latter will burn, and the former _won‘t_! Poor as Utah is by nature, clear though it be that whatever value the soil now possesses, represents only the loving labor bestowed upon it by the Saints, it is doubtful whether they are to continue to possess it, even though the remaining string of _Vedette_-born stories assert that Brigham “threatens hell” to the Gentiles who would expel him. The constant, teasing, wasp-like pertinacity of the _Vedette_ has done some harm to liberty of thought throughout the world. CHAPTER XVII. UTAH. “When you are driven hence, where shall you go?” “We take no thought for the morrow; the Lord will guide his people,” was my rebuke from Elder Stenhouse, delivered in the half-solemn, half-laughing manner characteristic of the Saints. “You say miracles are passed and gone,” he went on; “but if God has ever interfered to protect a church, he has interposed on our behalf. In 1857, when the whole army of the United States was let slip at us under Albert S. Johnson, we were given strength to turn them aside, and defeat them without a blow. The Lord permitted us to dictate our own terms of peace. Again, when the locusts came in such swarms as to blacken the whole valley, and fill the air with a living fog, God sent millions of strange new gulls, and these devoured the locusts, and saved us from destruction. The Lord will guide his people.”