32 THE GREAT KASIIf. 



Tahoe, one of the most beautiful mountain lakes of the 

 world. This is of fresh water, very deep, very clear, and 

 situated, amid the most enchanting scenery, over six thou- 

 sand feet above sea level. The swift and pure Truckee 

 River flows from it, to ultimately disappear in salt lakes 

 and more salt plains. 



Being a dry region, it is a region without forests, ex- 

 cept in a few places on the mountains. All the plains 

 are treeless, except the narrow fringe of trees along 

 some of the streams. Even the mountains of the in- 

 terior are without forests, almost naked, supporting onlj^ 

 a scanty shrubby vegetation. They stand up from the 

 desert plains, all the topographic features of their naked 

 sides sharply seen, and their ribs standing out with mar- 

 velous distinctness against the clear, cloudless sky. 

 From various peaks along the western rim I have looked 

 out over landscapes embracing several thousands of 

 square miles in one view, without a single forest and not 

 a green patch of any kind of more than one or two 

 square miles. 



All civilization is founded upon agriculture, and for 

 agriculture there there must be abundant water. A 

 prosperous state must be a state of homes, of which a 

 good proportion are country homes. City life is all very 

 pleasant, but cities cannot make a state nor a prosperous 

 people ; there must be tillable soil to produce food, and 

 water to make it fertile, and country homes. There are 

 few spots in this basin of any extent that are tillable 

 without irrigation, and not water enough to be made 

 available for ever irrigating more than a small fraction 

 of the whole. 



I may state here, that all of my own personal explora- 

 tion in this region was along its western portions. I 

 have only seen the other portions as any traveler might 

 in crossing it and stopping at a few points along the rail- 

 road; but with the western portion I am much more 



