66 LANDS OF THE ARID REGION OF THE UNITED STATES. 
have been described as they appear on the eastern shore of Antelope 
Island, a locality where the slope of the ground amounts to three or four 
degrees. The circumstances are different at the margin of the mainland, 
and especially where the slopes are very gentle. The lake is so shallow 
that its equilibrium is greatly disturbed by strong winds. Its waves are 
small, but in storms the water is pushed high up on the land toward which 
the wind blows, the extreme effects being produced where the inclination is 
most gentle. The islands, however, are little flooded; the water does not 
accumulate against them, but is driven past; and the easterly gales that 
produced the present storm line on the east shore of Antelope Island may 
have driven so much water to the westward as even to have depressed the 
level in that locality. Moreover, where the land surface is nearly level, the 
cleansing by rain of portions once submerged is indefinitely retarded. On 
all the flatter shores the lake is bordered by tracts too saline for reclamation 
by the farmer, and either bare of vegetation or scantily covered by salt- 
loving shrubs. These tracts are above the modern storm line, and they 
acquired their salt during some flood too remote to be considered in this 
conneetion. The largest of them is called the Great Salt Lake Desert, and 
has a greater area than the lake itself. : 
Thus it appears that in recent times the lake has overstepped a bound 
to which it had long been subject. Previous to the year 1865, and for a 
period of indefinite duration, it rose and fell with the limited oscillation 
and with the annual tide, but was never carried above a certain limiting 
3) 
yet returned. ‘The annual tide and the limited oscillation are continued 
as before, but the lowest stage of the new regime is higher than the highest 
line. In that year, or the one following, it passed the line, and it has not 
stage of the old. The mean stage of the new regime is 7 or 8 feet higher 
than the mean stage of the old. The mean area of the water surface is:a 
sixth part greater under the new regime than under the old. 
The last statement is based on the United States surveys of Captain 
Stansbury and Mr. King. The former gathered the material for his map in 
1850, when the water was at its lowest stage, and the latter in the spring 
of 1869, when the water was near its highest stage. The one map shows 
an area of 1,750 and the other of 2,166 square miles. From these I 
