The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1871-05-05

insect, and he is there. We suppose that he
came up at first into Utah over the deserts
from Mexico, and if he has not advanced much
beyond the Rio Grande on this side of the
Rocky Mountains it is because the wintry
SHOWS of the elevated plains Of Texas Gel
Llano Estacado) and the autumnal 6res Of the
prairies have kept him back. In Arizona,
Southern California, Nevada and Utah, and
in the western parts of Colorado and New
Mexico we fear he is q fixture, and will for
ever render the cultivation of the soil in those
regions subject to the chances of famine, more
or less, from his visitations.
There is hardly an image of destructiveness
more expressive of desolating power than an
army of locusts. The Bible has its graphic
illusions to them, from the plague of locusts
called down upon Egypt, when ''they covered
the face of the whole earth, 80 that the land
was darkened," down to the coming of the
herald of the new dispensation, John the
Baptist, whose ''meat was locusts and wild
honey" And this reminds us that In the first
recorded visit Of the white man to
Great Salt Lake, that Of the explorer
Captain Fremont, in 1874, his short supplies
there were eked out by grasshopper
cakes procured from the Indians. He had the
locusts, though not the wild honey. In addi-
ton to the locusts the Mormons are troubled
by swarms of destructive cricket, fearful
monster. In the first year after their settle
ment at Great Salt Lake the saints were
threatened with famine from the destruction
Of their growing crops by these crickets, when
cloud of little sea gulls from the Salt Lake
descended upon them and returned from the
lake every morning and kept at their good
work all day until the crickets were destroyed.
This saving interposition of the sea gulls was
regal ded by the saints as direct Intervention
of Providence, and it surely was Godsend.
Between this annual plague Of the grass
hoppers, however, and the Pacific Railroad,
and the newly discovered silver mines of
Utah, we foresee settlement of the question
Of Mormon polygamy without the further
Intervention Of Congress. 1t will be crowded
out or absorbed by the Genties. ''The grass
hopper is burden" of himself too heavy to
be borne by an agricultural people whose
fields are limited to the little green patches
in the Utah desert, and who depend upon
their fields for their subsistence. In conclu-
sion, having shown the Asiatic character of
the great western section of the United States,
even in the locust, we can only conclude that
there he is bound to Be a nuisance, and only
hope that the great chain of the Rocky Noun
tains and the great Plains, with their frosts
and fires, will prove an enduring barrier of
protection against him to the European Sec
ton of our country. In any event, the Utah
grasshopper or locust begins to loom up as an
important question touching the manifest
destiny of the Mormons and Mormon poly
gamy, and also in regard to the future pros
poets not 5hly q Utah, but likewise Of
Nevada, New Mexico, Western COLORADO,
Arizona and Southern California, for we see
that in Utah the locust has increased with the
cultivation of the soil.