he largest body of water in the western part of the United States,
and the largest salt lake within its boundaries. It has a length
of seventy miles and a maximum width of nearly fifty miles.

Desolate, indeed, must have appeared the surroundings of the lake,
with its salt-incrusted borders, as the Mormon emigrants gained the
summit of the Wasatch Range and looked out over the vast expanse
to the west. But as the slopes at the foot of the mountains seemed
capable of producing food for their support, they stopped and made
their homes there. Now in this same region, after half a century, one
can ride for many miles through as beautiful and highly cultivated
a country as the sun ever looked down upon. In the early days the
barren plains were broken only by mountains almost as barren, which
rose from them like the islands from the surface of the Great Salt
Lake. The only pleasing prospect was toward the east, where stood
the steep and rugged Wasatch Range, with its snow-capped peaks.
From its deep canons issued large streams of pure, cold water,
which flowed undisturbed across the brush-covered slopes, then
unbroken by irrigating ditches, and at last were lost in the salt
lake.

One might think that streams of water apparently so pure would
at last freshen the lake, but in reality they are carrying along
invisible particles of mineral matter which add to its saltness
day by day. The dry air steals away the water from the lake as
fast as it runs in, but cannot take the minerals which it holds
in solution.

Great Salt Lake is still considered very large, but at one time
it was ten times its present size, while still longer ago there
was no lake at all. Without a basin there can be no lake, and at
that far-away time, as we have already learned, the Great Basin
did not exist, and the streams, if there were any, ran away to
the ocean without hindrance.

When the Great Basin was formed by a breaking and bending of the
crust of the earth, many a stream lost its connection with the
ocean and went to work filling up the smaller basins, thus giving
rise to the lakes which have already been described. The largest of
these bodies of water, and in some respects the most interesting,
is Great Salt Lake.

[Illustration: FIG. 53.--OLD SHORE LINE OF LAKE BONNEVILLE

Foot of the Wasatch Range]

This lake, lying close to the lofty Wasatch Range, received so
much water from numerous streams during the Glacial period that
it slowly s