GREAT SALT LAKE PYRAMID LAKE RIVERS. 



375 



mountains west of the Great Salt Lake, and runs westwardly along 

 the northern side of the Basin towards the Sierra Nevada of Cali- 

 fornia. It courses onward for three hundred miles, without afflu- 

 ents, through a sterile plain, though the valley of its own creation is 

 richly covered with grasses and bordered with willows and cotton 

 wood. This remarkable stream will become of vast importance in 

 the travel towards California, for, rising towards the Salt Lake, it 

 pursues nearly the direct route towards the Pass of the Salmon 

 Trout river through the gorges of the Sierra Nevada, where at an 

 elevation of less than three thousand six hundred feet above the 

 level of the Basin, the pathway descends into the Valley of the 

 Sacramento, and penetrates the State of California only forty miles 

 north of Sutter's original settlement. 



The other known rivers of this strange and partially explored 

 region, are the Carson, Bear, Utah, Nicollet and Salmon Trout, 

 most of whose streams, furnished by the snowy peaks of the Sierra, 

 are absorbed in marshes and lakes, or return by evaporation to the 

 icy sources whence they sprang. 



Pyramid lake. 



Such are the prominent features of this vast Basin or Table-land, 

 in the interior of our continent, but as it is now separated by legis- 

 lation from its former territorial adjunct, we shall pass at once to 



