6Q BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



in length by forty in width, has risen regularly one foot at 

 least a year, for the past ten years. The water in that lake is 

 now ten feet deeper than it was ten years ago. Now, if you 

 take ten feet from the surface of that lake, — as it extends over 

 so much of the country, it has eaten up immense quantities of 

 land every year, — I say, if you take ten feet from the surface 

 of that lake to-day, I have no doubt you will have nearly as 

 much water as in all the lake underneath, because it is a com- 

 paratively shallow lake ; and the portion underneath occupies 

 so much less area, that I think I am perfectly safe in saying 

 that the water is twice as much as it was twenty-four years ago 

 when the Mormons came there. If we look up on the side of the 

 mountains, we see the old beaches where the lake once wore 

 its way into that solid rock, showing that where Salt Lake 

 City now is, was once deep down in the water. The lake is 

 now slowly rising, and if the process that has been going on in 

 the last ten years should continue, the time will come when the 

 Salt Lake problem will be solved ; it will be in a state of perfect 

 solution ; for the water will rise and wash far above it on the 

 mountain side. But it is not in Salt Lake Valley alone, or 

 immediately around the lake, but in all the valleys around 

 there and throughout that territory, that the water is increasing 

 in quantity. Capt. Stover, who went from the State of Maine, 

 told me that ten years ago he cut grass on the borders of 

 Stockton Lake, where now the water is forty feet deep. He 

 said that then there were no fishes except small ones in the lit- 

 tle streams there, and now there is a large lake, forty feet deep 

 in the deepest part, and well stocked with large and beautiful 

 fishes. "When you pass up and down throughout the Territory, 

 as I have done this summer, you will find evidence that in all 

 the streams the amount of water is constantly increasing, and 

 the Mormons regard it as a direct interposition of God. They 

 think it a special providence in their behalf, and I do not won- 

 der at it, when I see what it has done for their valley. Brig- 

 ham Young's son once told me — not on a religious matter, 

 but I could see that he believed in it as a religious matter — 

 that he had just come from a certain settlement in the southern 

 part of the Territory, where this increase of water was very 

 manifest. He said that the water was constantly increasing, 

 and new springs were bursting out. "Now," ho says, " twelve 



