Near the close of the day Brown and I reached the ranch of Peregrine Sessions, a pioneer Mormon and a man conspicuous in Mormon history, from whom the place was known as Sessions' settlement. As we rode up to the door, Mr. Brown said to me: "It was right here that we met our Mormon brothers who informed us concerning the new Salt Lake settlement." It was arranged that we should spend the night with Mr. Sessions, who during the evening gave a brief account of the perils and privations to which they were subjected on their journey and some incidents connected with the early days in Utah. During our evening's interview Mr. Brown described his first arrival at Salt Lake settlement, where he and his party found their friends living in brush sheds and dugouts, a few only having log cabins, their general condition being most discouraging. Such was the beginning of Salt Lake City. We may now recall the fact that the settlement of Salt Lake City by the Mormons in 1847, and the discovery of gold in California in 1848, were the prime factors in the awakening of the Far West. Salt Lake Valley was an alkali desert declared to be absolutely hopeless by the early trappers and explorers. Its reclamation and cultivation by those religious exiles made it the only supply point for provisions on the long road to the newly discovered Sacramento gold fields, and saved many from starvation, to the profit of all concerned. Mr. Sessions arrived in Salt Lake Valley in the middle of September, 1847, having conducted a company of fifty wagons, which closely followed the first train of Mormon pioneers conducted by Brigham Young. _The Deseret News_ is authority for the statement that "Peregrine Sessions was the father of fifty-six children,"--a patriarch indeed. It is true that the graphic yet ingenuously told story related by one of the discoverers of gold in California, one who carried to the States the first intelligence of that discovery, gave added interest to the visit that I soon made to those gold diggings, the fame of which had incited the first tide of transcontinental migration composed of hardy and reckless adventurers willing to undergo the trials and perils incident to such an expedition. These, with the Argonauts who sailed around by the Isthmus or Cape Horn, were the ones who first roused the latent energies of our Pacific coast territory. [Illustration: SUTTER'S FORT BEFORE RESTORATION, SACRAMENTO. CALIF. SITUATED NEAR THE PLACE WHERE GOLD WAS FIRST DISCOVERED IN CALIFORNIA]