POOLE ON THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT. 211 



objects, before a low-hanging cloud, its upper surface as it were 

 spray of great waves, dashed by the tempest against the mountain 

 islands and frozen at the instant, rapidly approached, obscured the 

 plain and changed the scene like a dissolving view. This picture 

 was but of short duration, for the cloud quickly advancing soon 

 enveloped me in its misty folds, and left nothing but an ill-defined 

 view of plain and looming mountain visible. 



From the Granite Mountain the trail speedily leads to the 

 lowest part of the desert, where no grease-wood or even sage brush 

 grows, and where the mud baked in the dry season glitters with its 

 salt incrustation. Like the sediment on the banks of the Avon it 

 separates into thin layers, but when wet from recent rains is as ad- 

 hesive and slippery as mud well can be, balling horses' feet much 

 worse than the damp snow does here in the month of March. This 

 mud has a perfectly level surface, and occupies the lower portion of 

 the desert. As the shore of this dried up sea is approached, a 

 gradual though all but imperceptible ascent being made, the charac- 

 ter of the detritus from being fine clay becomes more and more 

 sandy ; and the sand not baking on the surface as the mud of the 

 interior, gets blown during the dry season into hillocks, and little 

 mounds round each clump or isolated sage bush. It also takes the 

 form of long ridges stretching from point to point at the mouths of 

 bays, or encircling the quondam islands, often many miles from 

 their base, presents the character of sand bars, having gradually 

 sloping faces seaward, and with steep declivities landward, shuts 

 off what must have been immense lagoons from all but slight 

 connexion with the outer sea. A bar of similar character now 

 separates the desert from the high water line of the western 

 shore of the great lake, and as the elevation of the bed of the desert 

 cannot be many feet above the surface of the water in the sea, there 

 may be some truth in the Indian tradition, that long ago the 

 greater portion of this region was permanently under water. It is 

 well known that, after heavy winter storms, wide sheets of shallow 

 water stretch for miles over the desert. Dammed back from the 

 lake the water can only pass off by absorption, or evaporation. It 



