POOLE ON THE GREAT AMERICAN. DESERT. Zio 



waters. The species is very similar to that found in the salt pans 

 of Europe. 



Returning to the desert where we left the trail, to consider the 

 variations of level in the lake, the old overland 3tage route, after 

 passing the outlying belt of sand hills, traverses the ancient beach, 

 which starts from the mountain side fully nine hundred feet above 

 the lowest part of the desert, and extends seaward, if I may so 

 term it, for as much as four miles in some places, before the gravel 

 gives place to sand, and for many more miles before the region of 

 salt mud and utter desolation is attained. The whole face of the 

 beach shows evidence that many periods of cessation took place, 

 during the subsidence of the waters. In places, sections of the 

 materials which compose the beach are shown : beds of fine white 

 sand partly cemented, lie interstratified with beds of coarse gravel. 

 In sheltered ravines I have counted eighteen bench lines within an 

 elevation of two hundred feet. In other and exposed places the 

 sloping faces would be of great length, and represent an elevation of 

 one hundred feet or more between the lines of change of grade, as 

 round the points of the old promontories, and in positions parallel 

 to the general course of the plain and valleys. These wide benches 

 would seem to mark the more permanent stages in the general 

 subsidence, and the numerous lines seen in the better sheltered 

 bays, to point to intermediate stages of shorter duration, which 

 on the exposed shore became obliterated by the fluctuations of level 

 in the lake, and by the wash of waves during storms. Again in 

 large land-locked bays, as the present Camp Floyd valley, where 

 a stretch of country twenty-five miles long, by eight wide, has the 

 range of mountains lying parallel to the line of drainage ; there a 

 uniform slope of about seventy feet to the mile is seen without any 

 bench lines or divisions into terraces, except it may be round the 

 mounds at the base of points of rocks, and outlying foot hills. 



These benches, indubilably prehistoric beaches, cannot fail to be 

 noticed in others of the low-lying valleys of the country known as 

 the " great interior basin," and which includes all Nevada and half 

 of Utah ; an area of at least 150,000 square miles. Besides the 

 prominent benches, not-:cd by every one, a close inspection in 



