All communications for this department 

 should be sent to the Department Editor, 

 Mr. Harry G. Higbee, 13 Austin Street, 

 Hyde Park, Massachusetts. Items, articles 

 and photographs in this department not 

 otherwise credited are by the Department 

 Editor. 



The Sea Gulls Save the Crops. 



No event in Western history awak- 

 ens more interest than the episode of 

 the Crickets and the Gulls. It occur- 

 red in 1848, when Salt Lake City — the 

 earliest settlement in the Rocky Moun- 

 tains — was less than one year old. 

 The so-called "City" was not even a 

 village at that time ; it was little more 

 than a camp, consisting of a log-and- 

 mud fort, enclosing huts, tents, and 

 wagons, with about eighteen hundred 

 inhabitants. Most of these had fol- 

 lowed immediately after the Pioneers, 

 who, with Brigham Young, their lead- 

 er, arrived on the shores of the Great 

 Salt Lake in July. 1847. President 

 Young and others had returned to the 

 Missouri River to bring more of their 

 migrating people to their new home 

 among the mountains, and those who 

 remained here were anxiously await- 

 ing the results of their first labors to 

 redeem the desert and make the wilder- 

 ness to blossom. 



Some plowing and planting had been 

 done by the Pioneers upon their 

 arrival, but the seeds then put in such 

 as potatoes, corn, wheat, oats, peas and 

 beans, though well irrigated, did not 

 mature, owing to the lateness of the 

 season. The nearest approach to a 

 harvest, that year, were a few small 

 potatoes, which served as seed for an- 

 other planting. It was therefore their 

 first real harvest in this region that the 

 settlers of these solitudes were looking 

 forward to. at the time of the episode 

 mentioned. 



Much depended upon that harvest, 

 not only for the people already there, 



but for twenty-five hundred additional 

 immigrants, who were about to join 

 them from the far-away frontier. The 

 supplies brought by those who came 

 the first season had been designed to 

 last only about twelve months. They 

 were gradually getting low, and these 

 settlers, be it borne in mind, were well- 

 nigh isolated from the re^t of btrri'n- 

 ity. "A thousand miles form any- 

 where." was the phrase used by them 

 to describe their location. They had 

 little communication with the outside 

 world, and that little was by means of 

 the ox team and the pack mule. If 

 their harvest failed, what would be- 

 come of them ? 



In the spring of 1848, five thousand 

 acres of land were under cultivation in 

 Salt Lake Valley. Nine hundred acres 

 had been sown with winter wheat, 

 which was just beginning to sprout. 



Then came an event as unlooked for 

 as it was terrible — the cricket plague ! 

 In May and June these destructive 

 pests rolled in black legions down the 

 mountain sides, and attacked the fields 

 of growing grain. The tender crops 

 fell an easy prey to their fierce vorac- 

 ity. The ground over which they had 

 passed looked as if scorched by fire. 



Thoroughly alarmed, the commun- 

 ity — men. women and children — mar- 

 shaled themselves to fight the ravenous 

 foe. Some went through the fields 

 killing the crickets, but crushing much 

 of the tender grain. Some dug ditches 

 around the farms, turned water into 

 the trenches, and drove and drowned 

 therein the black devourers. Others 

 beat them back with clubs and brooms, 

 or burned them in fires. Still the crick- 

 ets prevailed. Despite all that could 

 be done by the settlers, their hope of a 

 harvest was fast vanishing — a harvest 

 upon which life itself seemed to de- 

 pend. 



They were rescued, as they believed, 

 by a miracle — a greater miracle than 



