OCR Text |
Show [COMMUNICATED.] THE NEW CANAL. The Logan and Smithfield Canal Company has lately been incorporated under the laws of the Territory, for the purpose of constructing a canal of sufficient capacity to carry water to irrigate at least five thousand acres of land. The land to be watered by the canal lies above Logan, Hyde Park and Smithfield. The capital stock of the company is placed at fifty thousand dollars and the company is to continue in existence for a period of fifty years. The shares are ten dollars each. The requisite amount of stock has been subscribed and paid up to enable the company to commence operations, and at the present time there are several companies of men actively engaged in laboring on the canal. For a distance of a mile and a half, from the point where the Logan river is tapped, along the rocky, rugged mountain side, is one of the most difficult and expensive pieces of work of the kind in the Territory. It is estimated that this mile and a half of canal will cost over twenty thousand dollars and indeed it almost seems impossible to construct an irrigating ditch along the precipitous and ragged edge of the mountain steep? [slope?]. But the citizens of Cache have pluck and energy and so the work goes bravely on. There are no bonds issued to aid in its construction, because, as President Preston puts it, "the work don't cost any dollars, we do it ourselves." Perhaps no enterprise which our citizens are engaged in, is more calculated to be productive of good than this. The water once on the bench, thousands of acres will be redeemed from sterility. Some two hundred city lots have been surveyed and we believe the most of them already located by responsible parties. Notices have several times been given out in each of the Bishop's wards for all new-comers or others who had no city lot, to apply to Col. T.F. Ricks, the president of the company, and they could obtain a good lot for labor on the canal; thus many worthy poor amongst us will be provided with a city lot for their labor, and there can be added to Logan from two hundred to five hundred families. Our beautiful Temple will ere? long be in the very heart of Logan city. Our young men need not wander off in search of homes or labor-both are at once offered them. Most of the brethren who own (directly or indirectly) the land beyond where the city lots are located, have shown the true spirit in causing their land to be surveyed into ten acre lots, with the necessary streets, and then saying to their brethren who have no land "Here brother you can have a piece of mine; make a home and be happy." The spirit existing among those brethren does not say "live and let live" but rather "live and help live." There are those however-let us be thankful they are so few-who are never happy except when endeavoring to block the wheels of every essential enterprise. There is perhaps no better evidence of the rightfulness of any project than to know that such persons are opposed to it. They seem ever learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth; we have no time to trifle with such. On with the work boys! Enlarge our borders. Take up and improve the farms and lots. There is more true wealth in that one canal than in an hundred silver mines. |