The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1882-02-07
MCBRIDE, THE EXPLORER.

It has long been the popular be-
lief that before the settlement of
the Salt Lake Valley, and for some
time afterwards, this region was
particularly forbidding and unin-
Viting. A few men had crossed the
mountains and traYersed the valley
and they reported it an arid waste.
The most cheering words the pion-
GERS heard when journeying hither,
and after their arrival, were that
starvation would certainly be their
unhappy lot did they rely upon OBJ
tanning living from the soil Of
Utah. But it seems this was all a
mistake; that Fremont was an ig-
noramus and no pathfinder; that
Jim Bridger was a fraud and a ga
loot, and that Brigham Young and
the 142 people who accompanied
him in the alleged weary march
across the plains and through the
mountains. were neither explorers
nor pioneers; and above all, it ap-
pears that Young and associates
came to the garden spot Of America,
an inviting valley whose attractions
and promises they could not resist.
Judge Mcbride blooms out
as the great hero, the explorer
and developer of the west, the
man whose eyes rested on this
beautiful field and whose soul drank
in the delights of the enhancing
prospect long years before Fremont
or BridgeT or Young ever heard of
it. Mcbride, now in Washington
working for Campbell whose salary
as delegate he hopes: to pocket as
fee, has written paper, which same
he circulated last week, giving to
each senator and representative
copy. The paper is poetic in its con-
StructiOn, and hence suggestive that
the Judge, since he was the reck-
less, daring explorer Of half GEN.
tury ago, has drifted into the refine
ments Of @stheticism. For all we
know he may to-day be wearing a
lily in his button-hele and raving
over sunfiowers and daffodils. But
to the Judges effusiou. He says it
is all a mistake that this region
was ever a desert that by "some
agency of man has been transformed
into fertile and habitab1e country,
and redeemed from a sagebrush
wilderness into a fair garden sur
rounding the Mormon Zion" The
impression that anything of the
kind has been done he pronounces
"a gross delusiOn,' saying that long
before the Mormons ever set
foot in Utah its valleys and
streams were the delight Of
the mountaineers. And listen
to this hero of the western wilder
ness chant his own praises and the
delights of the Salt Lake valley:
''While the Mormon chieftain was
struggling to build up his kingdom
asa sovereignty within the limits
Of Illinois, at Nauvoo, the writer of
this article was a youth wandering
among the recesseS of the Rocky
Mountains, and had seen with his
own eyes the regions he describes.
For hours he has stood upon the
mountain heights feasting his eyes
upon the ravishing beauties of its
fertile valleys, the grandeur Of its
lovely lake, and the thousand sights
to provoke his admiration and won
der How'delightfully enhancing
it must have been to the youthful
explorers companions 1--WE presume
he was not alone in his pioneering)
to watch the boy standing for hours
upon some mountain peak, gazing
with w.ld-eyed wonder over the
broad expanse Of sagebrush and
greasewood, drinking ecstatica ~ |
the bliss derived from the prospect
OF an alkalj lake or mud fiat |
near tho dancing waters of the