ident Young's advice for such of the discharged soldiers as were without means to remain in California, work through the winter, and come on to the Valley with their earnings in the spring. Accordingly, about half the soldiers returned, some to secure employment at Sutter's Mills, and to be heard from a little later in a way not dreamed of that September day, when they turned their faces westward and started back for the land of gold. The others continued on their way, arriving in Salt Lake Valley on the 16th of October. Two days later thirty-two of them, including Serjeant Daniel Tyler,† set out for the Missouri river, braving the dangerous prospect of wintry storms and blockading snows in their anxiety to join their families on the frontier. After much hardship and suffering they reached their destination on the 18th of December.

The Battalion men, returning from California, brought to the Valley wheat, corn, potatoes and garden seeds. Subsequently some of the settlers visited the coast and returned bringing more seeds and live stock. Soon afterward trade was opened up with Fort Hall,‡ and a little later with the frontier states.

As winter drew near, the colonists, having finished their late sowing, moved into the stockade to await the coming spring. The fort was now enclosed, the east side with log houses, and on the north, south and west with adobe walls. Two additional blocks, or parts of blocks, on the south were being enclosed in like manner by the newly arrived immigrants, whom the original fort could not accommodate. Meanwhile, many were living in tents and wagons. The additions were merely extensions of the first stockade, with which they communicated by gates. There was a large gate on the east, which was kept carefully closed by night. The roofs of the

*Now Coloma, El Dorado County, California.

Author of the valuable and interesting "History of the Mormon Battalion." Captain Grant of Fort Hall, was the first person outside the Mormon community who brought goods to the Utah market for sale. He sold sugar and coffee at one dollar a pint, calicoes at 50 and 75 cents per yard, and other articles in proportion.—Deseret News Sept. 28, 1854.

houses, or huts, all slanted inward. The doors and windows faced the interior, but each house had a small loop-hole looking out. The houses last erected were in some respects superior to the first, though even the best of them were poor. The mistake of making the roofs almost flat, instead of sharply slanting, eventually caused much discomfort. The fore part of the winter was exceptionally mild, but as the season advanced, heavy snows fell, then melted, and soaking through the dirt and willow roofs, descended in drizzling streams upon the heads, beds and larders of the miserable inmates; spoiling at once their tempers and their provisions. Apostle Taylor, whose house was one of the best,-having among other superior points a rough, whip-sawed plank floor,—had plastered the ceiling and walls with white clay, a fine quality of which was found in the neighborhood. But alas! the merciless water trickled through all the same, carrying with it in solution or in lumps the treacherous plastering. Umbrellas were in great demand, even while in bed, and it was no uncommon sight to see a good housewife bending over her stove, upon which the drops from above unceasingly dripped and sizzled, holding an umbrella in her left hand, while turning a beefsteak or stirring a mush-kettle with her right. The situation of the fort-dwellers, that season, though often ludicrous, was far from pleasant, and at times almost pitiable; quite so, indeed, where there was sickness, and a lack of needed shelter.

Other causes of discomfort were swarms of vermin,-— mice, bed-bugs, etc.-infesting the fort. The bugs were indigenous, being brought in the green timber from the mountains. The mice were also "native and to the manor born" though some may have been carried to the Valley in the grain wagons of the immigrants. Great white wolves also prowled around the fort, making night hideous with their howling, and attacking cattle on the range. So intolerable became this nuisance that hunting parties were finally organized, to make war upon the wolves and other wild-beasts. Their depredations then gradually grew less. As for the vermin, they were dealt with according to the best approved exterminating methods