shore-line of the lake are evidently affected by a slight surface tilt, for during the same generation that has seen the recent fall of the lake level the shore-line is in many cases 2 m. from the old, and fences may be seen a mile or more out in the lake. The lake bed is for the most part clear sand along the margin, and in deeper water is largely coated with crusts of salt, soda and gypsum.
The lake is a novel and popular bathing resort, the specific gravity of the water being so great that one cannot sink or entirely submerge oneself. There are well-equipped bathing pavilions at Garfield and Saltair on the S. shore of the lake about 20 m. from Salt Lake City. The bathing is invigorating; it must be followed by a freshwater bath because of the incrustation of the body from the briny water. The large amount of salt in the water makes both fauna and flora of the lake scanty; there are a few algae, the larvae of an Ephydra and of a Tipula fly, specimens of what seems to be Corixa decolor, and in great quantities, so as to tint the surface of the water, the brine shrimp, Artemia salina (or gracilis or fertilis), notable biologically for the rarity of males, for the high degree of parthenogenesis and for apparent interchangeableness with the Branchipus.
The lake is of interest for its generally mountainous surroundings, save to the N.W., where it skirts the Great Salt Lake Desert, for the mountainous peninsula, the Promontory, lying between thumb and fingers of the hand, shaped like and resembling in geological structure the two islands S. of it, Fremont and Antelope,[1] and the Oquirrh range S. of the lake. The physiography of the surrounding country shows clearly that the basin occupied by Great Salt Lake is one of many left by the drying up of a large Pleistocene lake, which has been called lake Bonneville. Well-defined wave-cut cliffs and terraces show two distinct shore-lines of this early lake, one the “Bonneville Shore-line,” about 1000 ft. above Great Salt Lake, and the other, the “Provo Shore-line,” about 625 ft. higher than the present lake. These shore-lines and the presence of two alluvial deposits, the lower and the larger of yellow clay 90 ft. deep, and, separated from it by a plane of erosion, the other, a deposit of white marl, 10-20 ft. deep, clearly prove the main facts as to lake Bonneville: a dry basin was first occupied by the shallow waters of a small lake; then, during a long period of excessive moisture (or cold), the waters rose and spread over an area nearly as large as lake Huron with a maximum depth of 1000 ft.; a period of great dryness followed, in which the lake disappeared; then came a second, shorter, but more intense period of moisture, and in this time the lake rose, covered a larger area than before, including W. Utah and a little of S. Idaho and of E. Nevada, about 19,750 sq. m., had a very much broken shore-line of 2550 m. and a maximum depth of 1050 ft. and a mean depth of 800 ft., overflowed the basin at the N., and by a tributary stream through Red Rock Pass at the N. end of the Cache valley poured its waters into the Columbia river system. The great lake was then gradually reduced by evaporation, leaving only shallow bodies of salt water, of which Great Salt Lake is the largest. The cause of the climatic variations which brought about this complex history of the Salt Lake region is not known; but it is worthy of note that the periods of highest water levels were coincident with a great expansion of local valley glaciers, some of which terminated in the waters of lake Bonneville.
Industrially Great Salt Lake is of a certain importance. In early days it was the source of the salt supply of the surrounding country; and the manufacture of salt is now an important industry. The brine is pumped into conduits, carried to large ponds and there evaporated by the sun; during late years the salt has been refined here, being purified of the sulphates and magnesium compounds which formerly rendered it efflorescent and of a low commercial grade. Mirabilite, or Glauber’s salt, is commercially valuable, occurring in such quantities in parts of the lake that one may wade knee-deep in it; it separates from the brine at a temperature between 30° and 20° F. The lake is crossed E. and W. by the Southern Pacific railway’s so-called “Lucin Cut-off,” which runs from Ogden to Lucin on a trestle with more than 20 m. of “fill”; the former route around the N. end of the lake was 43 m. long.
Great Salt Lake was first described in 1689 by Baron La Hontan, who had merely heard of it from the Indians. “Jim” Bridger, a famous mountaineer and scout, saw the lake in 1824, apparently before any other white man. Captain Bonneville described the lake and named it after himself, but the name was transferred to the great Pleistocene lake. John C. Frémont gave the first description of any accuracy in his Report of 1845. But comparatively little was known of it before the Mormon settlement in 1847. In 1850 Captain Howard Stansbury completed a survey, whose results were published in 1852. The most extensive and important studies of the region, however, are those by Grove Karl Gilbert of the United States Geological Survey, who in 1879–1890 studied especially the earlier and greater lake.
See J. E. Talmage, The Great Salt Lake, Present and Past (Salt Lake City, 1900); and Grove Karl Gilbert, Lake Bonneville, monograph 1 of United States Geological Survey (Washington, 1890), containing (pp. 12-19) references to the earlier literature.
GREAT SLAVE LAKE (Athapuscow), a lake of Mackenzie district, Canada. It is situated between 60° 50′ and 62° 55′ N. and 108° 40′ and 117° W., at an altitude of 391 ft. above the sea. It is 325 m. long, from 15 to 50 m. wide, and includes an area of 9770 sq. m. The water is very clear and deep. Its coast line is irregular and deeply indented by large bays, and its north-eastern shores are rugged and mountainous. The western shores are well wooded, chiefly with spruce, but the northern and eastern are dreary and barren. It is navigable from about the 1st of July to the end of October. The Yellow-knife, Hoarfrost, Lockhart (discharging the waters of Aylmer, Clinton-Colden and Artillery Lakes), Tchzudezeth, Du Rocher, Hay (400 m. in length), and Slave rivers empty into Great Slave Lake. The bulk of its water empties by the Mackenzie river into the Arctic Ocean, but a small portion finds its way by the Ark-i-linik river into Hudson’s Bay. It was discovered in 1771 by Samuel Hearne.
GREAT SOUTHERN OCEAN, the name given to the belt of
water which extends almost continuously round the globe
between the parallel of 40° S. and the Antarctic Circle (6612° S.).
The fact that the southern extremity of South America is the
only land extending into this belt gives it special physical
importance in relation to tides and currents, and its position
with reference to the Antarctic Ocean and continent makes it
convenient to regard it as a separate ocean from which the
Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans may be said to radiate.
(See Ocean.)
GREAVES, JOHN (1602–1652), English mathematician and
antiquary, was the eldest son of John Greaves, rector of Colemore,
near Alresford in Hampshire. He was educated at Balliol
College, Oxford, and in 1630 was chosen professor of geometry
in Gresham College, London. After travelling in Europe,
he visited the East in 1637, where he collected a considerable
number of Arabic, Persian and Greek manuscripts, and made a
more accurate survey of the pyramids of Egypt than any traveller
who had preceded him. On his return to Europe he visited a
second time several parts of Italy, and during his stay at Rome
instituted inquiries into the ancient weights and measures. In
1643 he was appointed to the Savilian professorship of astronomy
at Oxford, but he was deprived of his Gresham professorship
for having neglected its duties. In 1645 he essayed a reformation
of the calendar, but his plan was not adopted. In 1648 he
lost both his fellowship and his Savilian chair on account of his
adherence to the royalist party. But his private fortune more
than sufficed for all his wants till his death on the 8th of October
1652.
Besides his papers in the Philosophical Transactions, the principal works of Greaves are Pyramidographia, or a Description of the Pyramids in Egypt (1646); A Discourse on the Roman Foot and
- ↑ Besides these islands there are a few small islands farther N., and W. of Antelope, Stansbury Island, which, like Antelope and Fremont Islands, is connected with the mainland by a bar sometimes uncovered and rarely in more than a foot of water.
