e Great American Desert.

Not less strange are its lakes. Some lie in the deep recesses of hills
that dip down so steeply you cannot reach their shores; while the
mountains around them are so bleak and naked, that not even a bird ever
wings its flight across their silent waters. Other lakes are seen in
broad, barren plains; and yet, a few years after, the traveller finds
them not--they have dried up and disappeared. Some are fresh, with
waters like crystal--others brackish and muddy--while many of them are
more salt than the ocean itself.

In this Desert there are springs--springs of soda and sulphur, and salt
waters; and others so hot that they boil up as in a great caldron, and
you could not dip your finger into them without scalding it.

There are vast caves piercing the sides of the mountains, and deep
chasms opening into the plains--some of them so deep, that you might
fancy mountains had been scooped out to form them. They are called
"barrancas." There are precipices rising straight up from the plains--
thousands of feet in height--and steep as a wall; and through the
mountains themselves you may see great clefts cut by the rivers, as
though they had been tunnelled and their tops had fallen in. They are
called "canons." All these singular formations mark the wild region of
the Great American Desert.

It has its denizens. There are oases in it; some of them large, and
settled by civilised men. One of these is the country of New Mexico,
containing many towns, and 100,000 inhabitants. These are of the
Spanish and mixed Indian races. Another oasis is the country around the
Great Salt and Utah Lakes. Here is also a settlement, established in
1846. Its people are Americans and Englishmen. They are the Mormons;
and, although they dwell hundreds of miles from any sea, they seem
likely to become a large and powerful nation of themselves.

Besides these two great oases, there are thousands of others, of all
sizes--from fifty miles in breadth, to the little spot of a _few_ acres,
formed by the fertilising waters of some gurgling spring. Many of these
are without inhabitants. In others, again, dwell tribes of Indians--
some of them numerous and powerful, possessing horses and cattle; while
others are found in small groups of three or four families each,
subsisting miserably upon roots, seeds, grass, reptiles, and insects.
In addition to the two great settlements we have mentioned, and the
Indians, there i