The Utah war was inglorious. Far from its base, and operating in a desert against plainsmen of remarkable skill, the army was helpless. At will, the Mormon cavalry cut out and burned the supply trains, confining their attacks to property rather than to armed forces. When the army reached Fort Bridger, it found Brigham still defiant, his people bitter against conquest, and the fort burned. With difficulty could the army of invasion have lived through the winter without aid. In the spring of 1858 a truce was patched up, and the Mormons, being invulnerable, were forgiven. The army marched down the trail again. The Mormon hegira planted the first of the island settlements in the heart of the desert. The very isolation of Utah gave it prominence. What religious enthusiasm lacked in aiding organization, shrewd leadership and resulting prosperity supplied. The first impulse moving population across the plains had been chiefly conquest, with Oregon as the result. Religion was the next, producing Utah. The lust for gold followed close upon the second, calling into life California, and then in a later decade sprinkling little camps over all the mountain West. The Mormons would have fared much worse had their leader not located his stake of Zion near the point where the trail to the Southwest deviated from the Oregon road, and where the forty-niners might pay tribute to his commercial skill as they passed through his oasis on their way to California. CHAPTER VII CALIFORNIA AND THE FORTY-NINERS On his second exploring trip, John C. Frémont had worked his way south over the Nevada desert until at last he crossed the mountains and found himself in the valley of the Sacramento. Here in 1844 a small group of Americans had already been established for several years. Mexican California was scantily inhabited and was so far from the inefficient central government that the province had almost fallen away of its own weight. John A. Sutter, a Swiss of American proclivities, was the magnate of the Sacramento region, whence he dispensed a liberal hospitality to the Pathfinder's party.