44 STEPPES AND DESERTS, 



comparable with the Peak of Teneriffe in elevation, lofty 

 plains of an extent hardly met with elsewhere on the sur- 

 face of the earth, and almost twice as extensive in an east 

 and west direction as that of the Mexican plateaux. Prom 

 the group of mountains, which commences a little to the 

 west of Fort Laramie to beyond the Wahsatch mountains, 

 there is an uninterrupted swelling of the ground from 

 5300 to 7400 English feet above the level of the 

 sea. A similar elevation may 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 Titiaca, 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 128000 square miles in extent, arid, 

 almost entirely without human inhabitants, 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, Eeport of the Exploring 

 Expedition, pp. 154 and 273276.) 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 un- 

 critical discussion on the assumed non-existence of a great 



