of pure salt, transparent as crystal and of superior quality.

Mining, agriculture, lumbering, cattle and sheep raising, and many other branches of industry, are carried on most successfully in Nevada. The great overland railroad connecting San Francisco and New York passes through the whole width of the State, giving a stimulus to business, and inducing investments in mining interests; and various other roads, projected and building, indicate the speedy development of this section. Already there are six hundred miles of railroad built in Nevada.

The State is divided into fourteen counties, and in the mining districts there are several growing towns. Carson City, at the eastern base of the Sierras, is the capital of the State. It is built on a low flat, where the skirts of the Sierras reach a fertile valley. The population of the city is 3,042; of whom more than half are foreigners, there being 1,606 of the latter, and but 1,436 native Americans. Virginia City, the largest city in the State, a few miles east of Carson, and built upon the high ridge and over the great Comstock lode-the richest and most extensive quartz-mine in the worldhas a population of 7,048, almost equally divided between native and foreign born, there being 3,592 of the former, and 3,456 of the latter. White Pine, in the centre of a newly discovered and rich mining district, although scarcely a hut had been built in it two years before, had, at the beginning of 1871, a population of 7,200. Austin, Belmont, and several other growing towns in the mining districts indicate considerable activity and signs of general progress. The State has

in operation 156 quartz-mills, seven flour-mills, and twenty-two saw-mills. Schools, churches, theatres, and elegant dwellings in all the towns and villages exhibit the industry and intelligence of the people, who maintain in their State thirteen newspapers, and an aggregate of 160,000 books in its libraries.

Notwithstanding the wide areas of barren, alkaline, and sandy deserts of Nevada, enough of good soil, wide pasture-ranges, forests, lakes, rivers, and mines of gold, silver, and other minerals exist to warrant the permanent wealth and future greatness of this young and sparsely populated interior State.

CHAPTER XXXIII

UTAH.

Area--Acquisition-Climate-Seasons-Mines-Mining-Minerals -Mountains-Lakes-Rivers-Agriculture-Education-Material development-Mormons-Society-Population-Great Salt lake and Salt Lake City-Overland railroad-Discovery and history of Salt lake.

THE Territory of Utah, embracing an area of 106,382 square miles, is situated directly east of the State of Nevada, and is bounded on the west by Nevada, north by Idaho and Wyoming, east by Colorado, and south by Arizona.

The area comprising Utah, like that of Nevada and a great part of the Territory of Arizona, formerly belonged to the Mexican Territory of California, and title to it was acquired by the United States when, in 1846, Commodore Sloat took possession of California by hoisting the American flag over the Mexican territorial capital at Monterey, and by subsequent treaty between the United States and the Republic of Mexico

The Territory, as now bounded, is situated directly in the line of the overland railroad connecting San Francisco with Chicago, New York, and other eastern cities. Ogden, at the head of Great Salt lake, is 881 miles east of San Francisco and 1,913 miles west of Omaha. The road, running in an easterly and westerly direction, passes through the extreme northern end of the Territory, and close to the northern end of Great Salt lake, and through the city of Ogden, and distant from Salt Lake City about thirty-six miles. Between