ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 55 



even be said to occupy the whole space from 34 to 45 between the 

 Rocky Mountains proper and the Californian snowy coast chain. 

 This space, a kind of broad longitudinal valley like that of the Lake 

 of Titicaca, has been called, by Joseph Walker, a traveller well 

 acquainted with these western regions, and by Captain Fremont, 

 "The Great Basin." It is a terra incognita of at least 128,000 

 square miles in extent, arid, almost entirely without human inhabit- 

 ants, and full of salt lakes, the largest of which is 4200 English 

 feet above the level of the sea, and is connected with the narrow lake 

 of Utah. (Fremont, Report of the Exploring Expedition, pp. 154 

 and 273-276.) The last mentioned lake receives the abundant 

 waters of the "Rock River;" Timpan Ogo, in the Utah language. 

 Father Escalante, in journeying, in 1776, from Santa Fe del Nuevo 

 Mexico to Monterey in New California, discovered Fremont's "Great 

 Salt Lake," and, confounding lake and river, gave it the name 

 of Laguna de Timpanogo. As such I inserted it in my map of 

 Mexico; and this has given rise to much uncritical discussion on 

 the assumed non-existence of a great inland salt lake in North Ame- 

 rica a question previously raised by the well-informed American 

 geographer Tanner. (Humboldt, Atlas Mexicain, planche 2 ; Essai 

 Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, t. i. p. 231, t. ii. pp. 243, 313, 

 and 420; Fremont, Upper California, 1848, p. 9; and, also, Duflot de 

 Mofras, Exploration de 1'Oregon, 1844, t. ii. p. 40.) Gallatin says 

 expressly, in the Memoir on the Aboriginal Races in the Archseologia 

 Americana, vol. ii. p. 140, " General Ashley and Mr. J. S. Smith 

 have found the Lake Timpanogo in the same latitude and longitude 

 nearly as had been assigned to it in Humboldt's Atlas of Mexico." 

 t have dwelt on the remarkable swelling of the ground in the 

 region of the Rocky Mountains, because, doubtless, by its elevation 

 and extent, it exercises an influence hitherto but little considered, on 

 the climate of the whole continent of North America, to the south 

 and east. In the extensive, continuous plateau, Fremont saw the 

 waters covered with ice every night in the month of August. Nor 

 is the elevation of this region less important as respects the social 

 state and progress of the great United States of North America. 

 Although the elevation of the line of the separation of the waters 

 nearly equals that of the Passes of the Simplon (6170 French, or 



