THE PLUME PIRATES 325 



wriggling mass of the noisome brood. Civiliza- 

 tion thus flutters at the points of a bird's wing. 



' ' Sometimes this rescue of civilization comes in 

 such a way as to seem like a miracle. It happened 

 so at Salt Lake City. When the Mormons, after 

 their terrible and heart-breaking journey through 

 the wilds and the desert finally came to Utah and 

 settled down, they were threatened with ruin by 

 millions of black crickets which swept down upon 

 their fields like a horde of Huns and swept them 

 clean. With characteristic courage, the Mormons 

 sowed their seed again next year, but no sooner did 

 the crops give promise of a bountiful yield, when 

 down, again, came the horde of black crickets. 



''Then came the apparent miracle. Without a 

 single advance guard, into a country where man 

 had never been before, appearing from nowhere in 

 particular, came an avenging army of gray- 

 winged, white-bodied 'angels.' Hundreds and 

 thousands of Gulls poured down upon those grain 

 fields and they dealt with those crickets so ef- 

 fectively that in two days' time there wasn't a 

 'crick' to be heard anywhere. The Mormons took 

 this as a sign that Providence was with them. 

 Ever since that time Gulls have been protected 

 in Utah and there is a monument in Salt Lake City 



