LIFE IN THE FAR WEST 101 



fully charged with tobacco and kinnik-kinnik. Then 

 approaching the spring, he walked three times round it, 

 and gravely sat himself down. Striking fire with his 

 flint and steel, he lit his pipe, and, bending the stem 

 three several times towards the water, he inhaled a vast 

 quantity of smoke, and bending back his neck and 

 looking upwards, puffed it into the air. He then blew 

 another puff towards the four points of the compass, 

 and emptying the pipe into his hand, cast the con- 

 secrated contents into the spring, saying a few Indian 

 " medicine " words of cabalistic import. Having per- 

 formed the ceremony to his satisfaction, he returned to 

 the fire, smoked a pipe on his own hook, and turned 

 into his buffalo robe, conscious of having done a most 

 important duty. 



In the course of their trapping expedition, and 

 accompanied by Rube, who knew the country well, 

 they passed near the Great Salt Lake, a vast inland sea, 

 whose salitrose waters cover an extent of upwards of 

 one hundred and forty miles in length, by eighty in 

 breadth. Fed by several streams, of which the Big 

 Bear River is the most considerable, this lake presents 

 the curious phenomenon of a vast body of water with- 

 out any known outlet. According to the trappers, an 

 island, from which rises a chain of lofty mountains, 

 nearly divides the north-western portion of the lake, 

 whilst a smaller one, within twelve miles of the northern 

 shore, rises six hundred feet from the level of the water. 

 Rube declared to his companions that the larger island 

 was known by the Indians to be inhabited by a race of 



