History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

322
EDUCATION AND MANUFACTURES.
or summer, and during winter the snow-fall is not
enough to furnish irrigating streams in sufficient number
and volume. Throughout the valley, vegetation
is scant except in favored spots. With the exception
of the Santa Clara River in the south-west, the Green
River in the east, the Grand and other branches of
the Colorado in the south and east, the streams all
discharge into lakes or are lost in the alkali soil of
the bottom-lands. On the hillsides bunch-grass is
plentiful the year round, and in winter there is pasture
in the canons. Around Salt Lake the soil is poor
in the north and east are narrow tracts of fertile land;
toward the valleys of the Jordan and Tooele, separated
by the Oquirrh Range, and on the banks of the
Timpanogos and San Pete, is soil of good quality,
that yielded in places from sixty to a hundred bushels
of grain to the acre.
The Jordan and Timpanogos furnished good waterpower,
and on the banks of the latter stream was
built a woollen-mill that ranked as the largest factory
of the kind west of the Missouri River. In
the Green River basin, immense deposits of coal
were known to exist, and the Iron Mountains near
Little Salt Lake were so called from the abundance
of ore found in their midst. Other valuable
minerals were afterward discovered, among them being
gold, silver, copper, zinc, lead, sulphur, alum, and borax;
the waters of Great Salt Lake were so densely impregnated
that one measure of salt was obtained from five
of brine. 2
In the streams were fish of several varieties; 3 in
2 An analysis of the mineral matter forty years ago showed 97.8 per cent
of chloride of sodium, 1.12 of sulphate of lime, .24 of magnesium, and .23
of sulphate of soda. Linforth's Route from Liverpool, 101. The specific gravity
of the water is given by L. D. Gale, in Stansbun/s Expedition to O. S. Lake,
at 1.117. Out of 22.422 parts of solid matter Gale found 20.196 of common
salt, 1.834 of soda, .252 of magnesium, and of chloride of calcium a trace.
See also Sloan's Utah Gazetteer, 18S4, 177-8; Hist. Nev., 11, this series. In
chap. i. of that vol. is a further description of the great basin, its topography,
climate, soil, springs and rivers, fauna and flora.
3 ' The angler can choose his fish either in the swift torrents of the canons,
where the trout delights to live, or in the calmer currents on the plains,
;