THE PROGRESS OF WESTERN AMERICA. 



183 



A STRIKING COMPARISON BETWEEN THE PROMISED LAND OF CANAAN AND THE 

 SALT LAKE VALLEY, ON THE LINE OF THE RIO GRANDE WESTERN RAILWAY. 



all the evidence is in the editor of THE AGE will 

 condense the statements contained in the original 

 speech of Major Powell, his subsequent articles and 

 the replies of his critics, and review the entire con- 

 troversy. We would suggest that the questions 

 raised by Major Powell be made the subject of a 

 half day's discussion at the next Irrigation Congress, 

 and that a special committee be appointed to pre- 

 pare resolutions, defining the views of the men of 

 the West on water supply and irrigable lands. These 

 resolutions should be brief and lucid. They will be 

 accepted by investors and settlers as authoritative, 

 and thus we shall reach final conclusions about a 



subject that has disturbed 

 the irrigation world from 

 the moment Major Pow- 

 ell's startling views were 

 proclaimed. It will have 

 taken time to dispose of 

 the matter in this thor- 

 ough and conscientious 

 way, but the results will 

 be worth something, and 

 the future is long. 



The accom- 



C it nan ti 



and panymgmap 

 Deseret. of Canaan 



and the Salt Lake valley 

 strikingly exhibits the 

 topographical similarity 

 between the Promised 

 Land of the Bible times 

 and the Promised Land 

 to which Brigham Young 

 led the Mormon pioneers 

 of 1847. In both locali- 

 ties a River Jordan con- 

 nects a body of fresh 

 water with a Dead sea, 

 and the surrounding 

 mountain landscape is 

 almost the same in both 

 cases. How much this 

 strange likeness may 

 have appealed to the 

 imagination of Latter- 

 day Saints it is not easy to 

 say, but it is by no means 

 difficult to understand 

 how even a sentiment 

 might take very firm hold 

 of a people's mind, espe- 

 cially a people having 



just such an historical environment as the Mormons. 

 In this connection we present a portrait of the 

 memorable Wilford Woodruff, who in his eighty- 

 fifth year is still the active head of the Church of 

 Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has lived nearly 

 fifty years of his life on a twenty-acre irrigated farm 

 and his experience has fully illustrated the soundness 

 of Brigham Young's industrial policy alluded to else- 

 where in this issue of THE AGE. Bishop Thomas R. 

 Cutler, of whom a portrait is also published, is the 

 manager of the sugar factory referred to in another 

 place in connection with a discussion of irrigated 

 sugar beets. 



