FROM UTAH

Great Salt Lake City, Sept. 20, 1850.

To the Editor of the National Era:

Dear Sir: At the time I left the States, there was comparatively but little known respecting this region of country, or the people by whom it is settled, and everything relating to them possessed a singular interest.

How much has been communicated respecting them this season, I do not know; but, having travelled over a large portion of the "Great Basin" last summer, I take the liberty of telling you a part of what I have seen and learned, and, if you find anything new, or anything which you think will be interesting to the readers of the Era, you are at liberty to use it, premising, always, that you shall not publish this long preamble.

The general term Desert may with much propriety be applied to all the country included in the Great interior Basin, and all lying between the Great Basin and the Missouri and Arkansas rivers, obtained by our Government purchase from Mexico, and much of our former territory. There is here and there a fertile valley which is an exception.

Perhaps, of all this vast country, one twentieth part is arable land. The largest tract of fertile land lies just within the eastern rim of the Great Basin, Nosbatch mountains and the Utah and Great Salt Lakes. This is about 200 miles long, and varies from 5 to 40 miles in breadth, but even in this valley there is much barren land, and much that requires artificial irrigation.

Besides this great valley, there are several small valleys and oases in the Great Basin, but they are mostly so small, so far apart, and so badly timbered, that they will never be settled while there is any unoccupied land in the valley of the Mississippi.

Even the Great Salt Lake valley would in all probability have remained unsettled for years to come, had not the Mormons been compelled by persecution to seek within the limits of Catholic Mexico that freedom of conscience which was denied them in our country.

But this persecution, like that which drove the Pilgrim Fathers to the shores of New England, was destined in the course of events to work a great good.

Having felt the yoke themselves, Liberty, with them, is something more than a word; and, in organizing their infant State, their first care was to guaranty to every one who shall choose to settle within their borders the most perfect liberty of person and conscience.

And, believing that those who are sent into the world have a right to live on the world, they allow every one as much of the earth’s surface as he can occupy, subject only to the expense of survey and registry, and such regulations as are necessary to prevent fraud.

There has been no legislation on the subject of slavery, as their Constitution declares, and the people believe, that “all men are created free and equal,” and they very sensibly conclude that slavery can have no legal existence where it has never been legalized.

There are indeed a few black persons, perhaps a hundred, in the valley, who have been sent in by masters, and who still live with their former masters, but they are not considered as slaves; and I have been told by Brigham Young, who is Governor of the State, President of the Church, High Priest, Revelator, &c., that the idea of property in men would not be entertained a moment by any court in the State; and, with the Mormons (and the people here are nearly all Mormons), the voice of Brigham is the voice of God.

This is a singular community; consistency and inconsistency, light and darkness, bigotry and toleration, are strangely blended.

Reasoning clearly and logically, as they do, respecting man’s natural rights and duties, and having established the highest liberty for others, they are themselves the veriest slaves of the priesthood.

Over religious, and professing an unbounded reverence for all things sacred, believing that they are the chosen people, and have direct communication with God himself, they make the Sabbath a day of amusement and recreation, of balls and fandangoes; and profanity is as common here as prayers are at Oberlin.