58 THE GREAT BASIN. 



evaporates, and the air is so dry that much more would 

 evaporate should it fall. As a consequence the depres- 

 sions never fill up and the lakes are salt. Where there 

 are fresh vrater lakes, as Lake Tahoe, Lake Utah and 

 numerous small ones near the heads of the streams, their 

 outlets ultimately reach some salt lake, or salt marsh, 

 or salt sink. 



This region is traversed with mountains among, which 

 many streams rise, some of considerable size. They run 

 into the lower places where some of them empty into salt 

 lakes ; others sink into the sands without making a lake, 

 "sinks" they are called in common language of the 

 country ; others form shallow lakes in the winter which 

 dry up in the summer, leaving great mud-plains called 

 "playas." Great stretches are unmitigated deserts. 

 We often hear it said that there is no "American Des- 

 ert," but there is. Not much actual desert this side of 

 the Rocky Mountains, but in the region under discus- 

 sion there are certainly deserts enough, as barren and as 

 desolate as any part of the Sahara in Africa; not so 

 large, to be sure, but as truly upmitigated deserts. 



Along the eastern side of the Great Basin the W^asatch 

 Mountains rise, abruptly and steep, to the height of 

 10,000 or 12,000 feet. The Sierra Nevada on the west are 

 still higher, many of the peaks being over 12,000 and 

 some over 14,000 feet high. The early explorers, in cross- 

 ing the continent, found these great mountain barriers on 

 either side, with rivers draining inland to the salt lakes, 

 so they called this region a ' 'basin. ' ' The name was popu- 

 larly adopted, and is now often used for other regions of 

 interior drainage. 



The name basin, however, is a misnomer, and it is un- 

 fortunate that it has come to be so generally used be- 

 cause it conveys a very popular error, both as to the 

 causes of the distinctive features of the country and of 

 the structure. I find many intelligent people who have 



