and vaporized down to the mysterious Great Salt lake, the largest and most saline body of water in the world. Into these valleys the wear of the limestone mountains that tower even now from 4,000 to 6,000 or more feet above them have drifted. These valleys are fat with the spoliation of these mountains and under the magical influence of the water shed from its side through the summer months, man is able annually to make deep drafts upon them. Here nature is free and bids man be generous. The grand and enduring mountains bid him be strong and free. Here are wedded the two conditions that make a man a nobleman and unless environment has been shorn of her locks in this arid section it will here produce yeomanry worthy of our country. Since the part I am endeavoring now to fill was assigned to me, congress has empowered Utah to enter in due time into sisterly relations with our own granite mountain state where nature has produced freemen worthy of their privileges. I believe that the children of the western will bring no disgrace upon those of the eastern mountains from which the Mormon leaders in the main sprung. While the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints known to you as the Mormon church would doubtless be a more interesting theme than that under review, it is not under consideration. The prominence of this church before the nation and the misconceptions in relation to it and to its leaders, I trust will be ample excuse for the allusions already made. Utah is to be the forty-fifth state and is entitled to the confidence that justly belongs to her. Her landed system will give us a frugal, peaceful and liberty-loving people. At the head of the church stands as simple-hearted and kindly an old man, now eighty-six years of age, as it has been my pleasure to know. Hon. George Cannon stands next in authority and impresses one at once as a man of clear judgment and of kind and noble instincts. I believe that no injury to the people of Utah or to the country will come at their hands, and that their pledge of honor to the United States in relation to plural marriages will be respected when statehood will clothe them with power as leaders of the majority to break the spirit while apparently keeping the form of the law. While bearing cheerful testimony to the opportunities of Utah and the virtues of her people, I would not woo you from the mountain homes of your youth. Eighteen years away from my own home under favoring skies has wrought out for me the conviction expressed by the great war secretary of the state and recently reiterated in another form by a professor of Harvard, as the result of his investigations, that the happiest life is to be found on the spot of one's birth. Longevity, health, and vigor are at their best here in scenes matchless by any farming area of the country. Here, too, the elements have capacitated those reared in them to make as good homes and as cultured a living in them as is now likely to be secured under any other skies in our beloved country. FRIDAY.-AUGUST 17. Friday, August 17, was devoted to an excursion to Roxmont Poultry Farms upon invitation of the proprietor, Dr. J. A. Greene. Seven steamboats were required to convey the vast number that attended. The exercises at the poultry farms consisted of an inspection of the vast poultry plant here located and an address by Abel F. Stevens of Wellesley, Mass., upon poultry management. The excursion and exercises were a fitting termination to a successful meeting. |
