THE in RIG A TIOX A GE. \ 17 



water, until the length of the lake has decreased from eighty miles 

 thirty years ago to barely seventy, while its width at no place is 

 greater than twenty-live miles. At some places the shore line has 

 receded five miles within as many years. 



The Mormons, however, do not fear the lake will ever disappear. 

 It is one of their sources of wealth, the pumps which draw the water 

 from the lake to the evaporating squares which dot the shore often 

 going night and day. It would be more difficult and more expensive 

 to mine salt than to pump water and leave the rest of the manufactur- 

 ing to the sun, hence they have faith that the Lord will not inflict the 

 blow upon them. They need river water for irrigation, therefore they 

 take it: they look to lake water for some of their income, therefore 

 they expect that the divine power which they believe, led them to 

 their holy land, will see that the lake is kept filled. The contradic- 

 tion in their action and their faith they do not appear to notice. They 

 certainly looked to none but themselves to settle the irrigation 

 difficulty. 



To the older generation of Mormons the lake is a sort of fetich. 

 The pioneers regarded it with actual reverence, and though they were 

 not its finders they never would consider that any who preceded 

 them had part in the honors of the discovery. They made their own 

 claims good by bestowing upon it the name it bears. 



The Great Salt Lake has been discovered for the first time by as 

 many different persons as have most parts of Africa. Before any one 

 actually visited it news of the existence of a body of bad tasting water 

 had been carried by the Indians over the mountain ranges on either 

 side. The historian of the West, Hubert Howe Bancroft, takes pains 

 to say that the Frenchman, Barou La Hontan, who explored or pre- 

 tended to explore the lower and central Mississippi country in the lat- 

 ter part of the seventeenth century, drew upon his imagination when 

 he wrote that his Indian guides told him of the "bitter water" as far 

 as the sunset. Mr. Bancroft, however, advances no proof of his asser- 

 tion. Although Baron La Hontan wrote many fairy tales he told the 

 truth in many instances, and this may have been one of them. The 

 tale is plausible enough. 



The Great Salt Lake was in the country of the Ccrnanche Indi- 

 ans when the Spanish friar, Escalante, came almost to its shores in 

 the next century, and he learned they had been rulers there for sev- 

 eral generations. The Comanche influence extended far to the east- 

 ward, and nothing would be more natural than that the gossip of the 

 "bitter water" should travel to border tribes and by them be transmit- 

 ted to the river dwellers. 



Escalante gave civilization the first definite knowledge of the 

 Great Salt Lake. In 1776 he was stationed at Santa Fe, the outpost 

 Spanish Settlement of the middle north. The commandant desired to 

 learn if a route could be found between Santa Fe and the post ai Mon- 



