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Europe at
last awoke to the fact that there was but one Power on the American
continent, a power with which even the mightiest monarch could ill
afford to quarrel. [Footnote: See _The Mexican War_.] The very year in
which the final treaty of peace was signed (1848) the Mormons, a
religious sect, finding themselves unwelcome and out of place in
Illinois, moved westward in a body. Enduring every hardship, every
privation, perishing by hundreds in the trackless deserts, captured and
put to torture by the Indians, they still persevered in their migration,
and, halting at last in the valleys of Utah, began the settlement of the
Central West. [Footnote: See _Migrations of the Mormons_.]
Also in that same year, gold was discovered in California. Thousands of
eager adventurers flocked thither, and thus the vast wilderness that
Mexico had lightly surrendered had hardly become United States territory
ere it was filled with people, not listless semi-savages, but eager,
energetic men, resolute and resourceful.


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