The ancient Lake Bonneville. 165 



verdant oasis to rise in the midst of the salt steppe. Next we 

 surveyed the bright blue mirror of the saline lake, from Avhich 

 jagged islands emerged in picturesque beauty ; toward the west 

 there followed a white lustrous plain bounded on the far horizon 

 by violet mountain silhouettes. 



At present the lake has an average depth of 4 meters; but 

 there was a time when the wide valley basin, 4,500 square kilo- 

 meters in extent, was covered by a lake 300 meters deep. At 

 that period the breakers cut a terrace in the rocks of the lake 

 shore, and while the lake water evaporated and its level gradu- 

 ally sank, there were formed the various shorelines which now 

 may be traced as horizontal bands in parallel course along all the 

 mountain slopes. Great Salt lake is the last scanty remnant of 

 old " Lake Bonneville," and the Salt desert is a dried lake bottom. 



In yellow radiance the sun's disk sank behind the mountain 

 crags when on the Southern Pacific railway we traversed part of 

 the salt desert; the night fell quickly, and soon the desert 

 gleamed in the moonshine like glistening hoar-frost. 



When we set out next morning from the lonely station of 

 Terrace on a ramble over the desert our expectations were raised 

 to the highest pitch. Krassnoff recalled his travels in Turkestan ; 

 I remembered the Arabian desert ; and we looked around anx- 

 iously, scanning with care each pebble, each sandhill, each sage 

 bush and each rock, in order to comj^are them with our expe- 

 riences in Africa and Asia. While Krassnoff quickly felt at 

 home and everywhere discovered resemblances to the steppes of 

 inner Asia, I marveled to see a desert picture unwonted and 

 strange to me. Wherever my eye might stray, it rested on the 

 yellow bloom of Halophyta, the silver-grey bushes of Artemisia, 

 and spiny cactuses. Among creeping opuntias I saw a few small 

 moss cushions, and at the foot of the granite hills grew juniper 

 trees two meters high with stems a foot in thickness. We walked 

 in short serpentine windings among bushes a foot in height ; 

 some scattered spots were covered with brown pebbles ; small 

 sandy water-courses Avound, with many a loop, to end on the 

 dazzling white salt plain. As we approached that plain the 

 scrub became scantier, rising island-like from the flat surface, 

 and finally there lay before us the floor-like horizontal plain of 

 saline clay, entirely devoid of plants. The salt formed a coat of 

 fine powder over the gray clay, aiid the small crystals glistened 

 and sparkled in the sun like fresh-fallen snow. The ground was 



