The Dead Sea.
CHAPTER VII.
Third Week at Great Salt Lake City.—Excursions.
Governor Cumming had asked me to accompany Madam and himself to the shores of the lake, with an ulterior view to bathing and picnicking.
One fine morning, at 10 A.M., duly provided with the nécessaire and a thermometer—which duly snapped in two before immersion—we set out down the west road, crossed the rickety two-laned bridge that spans the holy stream, and debouched upon a mirage-haunted and singularly ugly plain. Wherever below the line of debordement of the lake's spring freshet, it is a mere desert; where raised, however, the land is cultivable, from the Wasach Mountains to Spring Point, at the north of the Oquirrh, giving about eighty square miles of fertile land. The soil, as near the lake generally, is a thin layer of saline humus, overspreading gravel and pebbles. The vegetation is scattered artemisia, rose-bushes, the Euphorbia tuberosa and other varieties of milk-weed, the greasewood, salicornias, and several salsolaceæ. There are numerous salt deposits, all wet and miry in the rainy season; and the animals that meet the sight are the coyote, the badger, and the hideous Phrynosoma. A few blue cranes and sage-chickens, which are eatable till October, were seen; and during winter the wild-fowl are found in large flocks, and the sweet-water streams are stocked with diminutive fish. In contrast with the bald and shaven aspect of the plain, rose behind us the massive forms of
