The valley of the Great Salt Lake, destined to become an oasis in the American desert, supporting the only agricultural community existing therein during nearly twenty years, discouraged many of the Mormons at the start. In Illinois and Missouri they were used to wood and water; here they found neither. In a treeless valley they were forced to carry their water to their crops in a way in which their leader had more confidence than themselves. The urgency of Brigham in setting his first detachment to work on fields and crops was not unwise, since for two years there was a real question of food to keep the colony alive. Inexperience in irrigating agriculture and plagues of crickets kept down the early crops. By 1850 the colony was safe, but its maintenance does still more credit to its skilful leadership. Its people, apart from foreign converts who came in later years, were of the stuff that had colonized the middle West and won a foothold in Oregon; but nowhere did an emigration so nearly create a land which it enjoyed as here. A paternal government dictated every effort, outlined the streets and farms, detailed parties to explore the vicinity and start new centres of life. Little was left to chance or unguided enthusiasm. Practical success and a high state of general welfare rewarded the Saints for their implicit obedience to authority. Mormon emigration along the Platte trail became as common as that to Oregon in the years following 1847, but, except in the disastrous hand-cart episode of 1856, contains less of novelty than of substantial increase to the colony. Even to-day men are living in the West, who, walking all the way, with their own hands pushed and pulled two-wheeled carts from the Missouri to the mountains in the fifties. To bad management in handling proselytes the hand-cart catastrophe was chiefly due. From the beginning missionary activity had been pressed throughout the United States and even in Europe. In England and Scandinavia the lower classes took kindly to the promises, too often impracticable, it must be believed, of enthusiasts whose standing at home depended upon success abroad. The convert with property could pay his way to the Missouri border and join the ordinary annual procession. But the poor, whose wealth was not equal to the moderately costly emigration, were a problem until the emigration society determined to cut expenses by reducing equipment and substituting pushcarts and human power for the prairie schooner with its long train of oxen.