166 Dr Johannes Walther — Tlie North American Deserts. 



honeycombed with polygonal heat cracks, and reflected a glare 

 so intense and dazzling that one could look about only with half- 

 shut eyes. 



Krassnoff told nie that this landscaj^e agreed in many points 

 with the deserts and takyrs of inner Asia, but I 'found myself 

 face to face with an entirely new type of desert. I was wont, 

 after several hours' ride over gravel-covered serir or brown 

 hamada, to come to a wadi distinguishable, even from afar, from 

 its plantless surroundings as a green band ; I had often been 

 engaged with my bedouin for an hour in gathering dry scrub 

 in order to have the fuel necessary for the fire. Here in the 

 American desert there Avere plants in abundance, and only the 

 increasing salinity of the soil checked vegetation. Apart from 

 the salt-covered lowlands, I received everywhere the impression 

 of an Egyptian wadi vegetation. Bush stood beside bush, and 

 between them was plantless soil ; but on looking over the region 

 from an elevated point, everything seemed sprinkled with bloom- 

 ing green bushes. Now this phyto-geographic habit, or, if I may 

 so term it, the " wadi character " of the whole desert, is not con- 

 fined to Salt Lake desert, but a similar abundance of plants was 

 found by me in the Mohave desert, the Gila desert, and the des- 

 erts of western Texas. 



It may often have called forth a smile on the part of my com- 

 panions to hear me complain again and again of the many plants 

 in the North American deserts ; but I cannot sufficiently em- 

 phasize the difference as compared with northern Africa. The 

 salt-covered tracts on the shore of Great Salt lake, the bottom of 

 the ancient lake Bonneville, are indeed absolutely plantless, and 

 in this respect delight the heart of the desert traveler; but it 

 must be remembered that in this case it is merely the increasing 

 salinity of the soil that kills vegetation. And when we recall 

 that we here tread on the bottom of a drainless, desiccated 

 diluvial lake, the theory of a Saharan sea, which in the case of 

 northern Africa may well be assumed to have been definitively 

 refuted, might seem to find complete confirmation in Great Salt 

 lake of Utah. There we have a desert whose poverty in vegeta- 

 tion is an effect of evaporated salt water. 



I supposed at first that this great wealth of plants in the desert 

 of Utah and Colorado is a consequence of the great topographic 

 altitude, for these deserts have an altitude of more than 1,500 

 meters. The plateau of the southern Galala in the Arabian 



