160 ANDREW JACKSON HOWE. 



the saline waters, as in the Dead sea. Aquatic fowls 

 may rest their wings for a short time on the bitter 

 waters, but finding no food they soon fly to more 

 welcome haunts. The passing gull turns its eyes 

 askance at the lifeless waters, and quickly flies away. 



Salt Lake City is built at the base of the snow- 

 capped range, at a distance of three miles from the 

 lake's beach ; and the thrifty and enterprising inhab- 

 itants have conducted bounteous supplies of fresh 

 water through the streets. The founders of the city 

 are Mormons, who, while on a pilgrimage in search of 

 a promised land, Avere forced, through exhaustion, to 

 sojourn in this inhospitable^spot. They were polyga- 

 mous, and sought a remote place where they could 

 sustain the peculiar domestic relation and not be mo- 

 lested. By their industries and economies they have 

 become prosperous in worldly affairs they have 

 " made the desert like a garden." 



To the westward of Salt Lake, other basins of 

 water exist, with a high per cent, of salinity. The 

 Humboldt sinks or brackish pools, into which streams 

 from the ipner slopes of the Sierra Nevada find their 

 way, have no outlets, though the hypothesis has been 

 advanced that subterranean passages give exit to ac- 

 cumulating waters. But, if there were underground 

 means of escape, water in these pools would be fresh, 

 and not brackish. The evidence is that the inflowing 

 waters penetrate the coarse gravel of the valley, and 

 at length escape through evaporative and other dis- 

 sipating agencies. 



To the southward of the great Utah depression, 

 in the semi-desert regions which extend through 

 Southern California, are basins and circumscribed de- 

 pressions much lower than the great Utah basin. The 



