=Connection with Irrigation.=--The connection of members of the Battalion with the introduction of irrigation among an Anglo-Saxon people, and most likely coming from their suggestion, is a deduction from circumstances rather than a fact sustained by direct and positive proof. When Brigham Young's company of pioneers were about to leave Green River on July 4, 1847, they were overtaken by a detachment of thirteen men from the Battalion, who were in pursuit of men who had stolen horses from their camps some seven days' travel eastward. These men had been with the several invalided detachments from the Battalion--about 150 in all--that had wintered at Pueblo, in what is now the state of Colorado. They were incorporated into the pioneer company and came on with it to Salt Lake valley, and undoubtedly members of this group would be upon the ground that 23rd day of July, when ploughing was first attempted on the south fork of City Creek, on the present site of Great Salt Lake City. The annals of that day say that the ground was so dry and hard that in the attempt to plow it several plows were broken. Whereupon, at someone's suggestion--who it was that made it the annals do not disclose, and it is not known--a company was set at work to put in a dam in the creek and flood the land in order to plow it. This was the beginning of Anglo-Saxon irrigation. As already stated, who it was that made the fortunate suggestion that the water be turned out upon the land in order to make it possible to plow it, is not known, but we have seen that thirteen members of the Battalion were among the pioneers, and some of them had seen irrigation in operation among the Mexicans at Santa Fe and further south in the valley of the Rio Grande. What more likely than that some of those men who had seen irrigation in progress should suggest the flooding of the land to prepare it for plowing, as they had seen it conducted over the land to convey moisture to the growing vegetation? The probability of it has moral certainty. FOOTNOTES: [78:a] History U. S. (Morris), 1877 ed., p. 326. [78:b] History of the U. S. (Fiske), 1877 ed., p. 336. [78:c] Conquest of Mexico and California--Cooke, p. 159. Also History of the United States--Morris, p. 326. X. THE SUBSEQUENT DISTINCTION ACHIEVED BY THE BATTALION'S COMMANDING OFFICERS. [Illustration: Philip St. George Cooke] It may be of interest, and certainly it belongs to the history of the Battalion, to say that its commanding officer and the two lieutenants of the regular army, his staff officers, rose later to honorable distinction during the war between the States.