STAXSBURY'S OBSERVATIONS AT GREAT SALT LAKE. 103 



depending on human agencies can only be furnished under exceptionally 

 favorable circumstances, and for the very latest historical periods. The 

 great body of evidence going to show a diminution of the -water on the 

 earth is therefore furnished by the great closed basin regions of the world, 

 — those of Western North America and of Central Asia. Not that other 

 countries do not offer abundant testimony coiToborative of the facts S2)ecially 

 made evident in the regions mentioned. On the contrary, the body of lacts 

 which might be brought together, did space permit, is abundantly com- 

 prehensive in character to enable us to include the whole land surface 

 of the globe in our generalizations. We may first, however, speak of those 

 particular proofs of desiccation which are presented within the region of the 

 Cordilleras. 



There is no body of water in the country which displays in a more marked 

 manner the characteristic indications of decrease of size than does Great 

 Salt Lake. Naturally, therefore, this was the first locality to attract the 

 attention of scientific explorers. So far as known to the writer, Captain 

 Stansbury was the first to call attention to the former much larger dimen- 

 sions of this body of water. Speaking of the low land near Promontory 

 Point, he says: "This extensive flat appears to have formed, atone time, 

 the northern portion of the lake, for it is now but slightly above its 

 present level. Upon the slope of a ridge connected witli this plain, 

 thirteen distinct successive benches, or water-marks, were counted, which 

 had evidently, at one time, been washed by the lake, and must have been 

 the result of its action continued for some time at each level. The high- 

 est of these is now about two hundred feet above the valley, which has 

 itself been left by the lake, owiiit/ probably to gnidual elevafion occasioned bij sub- 

 terraneous causes. If this supposition be correct, and all appearances conspire 

 to support it, there must have been here at some former period a vast inland 

 sea, extending for hundreds of miles; and the isolated mountains whicli now 

 tower from the flats, forming its western and southwestern shores, were 

 doubtless huge islands, similar to those which now rise fiom tlie diminished 

 waters of the lake." * 



Here, as will be evident, the present greatly diminished area of Great Salt 

 Lake as compared with that of former times is distinctly recognized, Avhile the 

 causes and conditions of this remarkable chanse would seem, from the state- 

 ment italicized by the present writer, to have been entirely misunderstood, 



* An Expedition to the Great Suit Lake of Utiili. By Howard Stansbury. Philadelphia, 1852, p. 105. 



