Before proceeding to our picnic, I will briefly resume the history and geography of this Mare Mortuum. The Baron de la Hontan, the French governor of Placentia, in Newfoundland, about 1690, heard from Indians of a Great Salt Water, which he caused to disembogue through a huge river into the South Sea or Pacific Ocean. Like the Lake Tanganyika, in Central Africa, it was arrayed in the garb of fable, 300 leagues of length, 30 of breadth, with “100 towns about it,” like Mr. Cooley’s highly imaginative “Zanganica,” and navigated in large boats by the savage Mozeemleks, who much remind one of the old semi-mythical “Mono-moezi.” Doubtless many a trapper and obscure trader has since that time visited it; a name or two has been found upon the adjacent rocks, but those were braves who, to speak metaphorically, lived before the age of Agamemnon. In 1845, Colonel Frémont, then engaged with his second expedition, made a partial flying survey, which, in 1849-50, was scientifically completed by Captain Howard Stansbury.

In geologic ages the lake occupied the space between the Sierra Madre on the east, and the ranges of Goose Creek and Humboldt River on the west. The length is roughly computed at 500 miles from north to south, the breadth from 350 to 500, and the area at 175,000 square miles. The waters have declined into the lowest part of the basin by the gradual upheaval of the land, in places showing thirteen successive steps or benches. A freshet of a few yards would submerge many miles of flat shore, and a rise of 650 feet would in these days convert all but the highest peaks of the surrounding eminences into islands and islets, the kanyons into straits, creeks, and sea-arms, and the bluffs into slightly elevated shores. Popular opinion asserts that the process of desiccation is going on at the rate of about half a mile in ten years. But the limits of beach and drift line laid down by Captain Stansbury are still well defined, and the shrinking of the volume may be ranked with its “sinking”—like the sink of the Humboldt and other rivers—an empirical explanation, by which the mountaineer removes the difficulty of believing that evaporation can drain off the supplies of so many rivers.

THE GREAT SALT LAKE.The lake, which is about the size of the African Chad, occupies the northeastern corner of Utah Territory, and lies to the northwest of the Great Salt Lake Valley, which is forty miles long by about twelve in breadth. The major axis of the irregular parallelogram is sixty to seventy miles in length from north to south, by thirty to thirty-five from east to west. Its altitude has been laid down at 4200 feet above, while the Dead Sea of Palestine is 1300 feet below sea level. The principal influents, beginning from the north, are the Bear River, the Weber River, and the Jordan. They supply the balance of evaporation, which from water is greater, and from high lands is usually less, than the rain. The western side is a perfect desert—a salt and arid waste of clay and sand, with the consistence of mortar when wet, which can not boast of a single stream; even the springs are sometimes separated by “jornadas” of seventy miles. When the rivers are in flood, the lake, it is said, rises to a maximum of four feet, overflowing large tracts of level saline plain, winding between the broken walls of rock which surround it on all sides. Near its shores the atmosphere is reeking, bluish, and hazy, from the effects of active evaporation, and forms a decided change from the purity and transparency of the air elsewhere. Surveyors have observed that it is a labor to use telescopes for geoditic purposes, and that astronomical observations are very imperfect. The quantity of vapor is less, and evaporation has less tension and density from the surface of salt than of fresh water; here, however, the operation is assisted by sunheat sufficient to produce an aeriform state, and by a wind brisk enough to prevent the vapor accumulating over the surface.

The water of this remarkable feature, which so curiously reproduces the marvels of Judea, contains nearly one quarter of solid matter, or about six times and a half more than the average solid constituents of sea-water, which may be laid down roughly at three and a half per cent. of its weight, or about half an ounce to the pound.[179] The Dead Sea is its sole known superior. The specific gravity is 1·170, distilled water being 1·000; the North Atlantic, between latitude 25° N. and longitude 52° W. (G.), 1·020; and the Dead Sea, at 60° Fahrenheit, from 1·22742 to 1·130. The vulgar estimate of its saltness is exaggerated. I have heard at Salt Lake City of one bucket of saline matter being produced by the evaporation of three; and that meat can be salted, and corned beef converted into junk, after twelve or fourteen hours in the natural unevaporated brine. It is used without preparation by the citizens, who have not adopted the precautions recommended by Dr. Gale.[180] It is collected by boys, shoveled into carts at the points of the beach where the winds dash up the waves—forming a regular wind-tide—and is sold in retail at half a cent per pound, or two shillings per hundred pounds. The original basin of geological ages was, doubtless, as the shells have proved, fresh water. The saline substances are brought down by rain, which washes the soil and percolates through the rocky ledges, and by the rivers, which are generally estimated to contain from ten to one hundred grains of salt per gallon,[181] and here probably more, owing to the abundance of soda. The evaporation is, of course, nearly pure, containing but very minute traces of salts.

[179] “One hundred parts by weight were,” says Dr. Gale, “evaporated to dryness in a water-bath below the boiling-point, and then heated to about 300° of the thermometer, and retained at that heat till the mass ceased to lose any weight. It gave solid contents 22·422 (?), and consisted of

Chloride of sodium
(common salt)		20·196 -In the Abbé Domenech’s work the analysis is taken from Col. Frémont: thus—- Chloride of sodium97·80
Chloride of calcium0·61
Sulphate of soda1·834Chloride of magnesium0·24
Chloride of magnesium0·252Sulphate of soda0·23
Chloride of calciuma traceSulphate of lime1·12
Total22·282(?)”Total100·00

The waters of the Dead Sea give solid contents 24·580, and consist of

Chloride of sodium10·360
Chloride of calcium3·920
Chloride of magnesium10·246
Sulphate of soda·054
Total24·580

The strongest natural brine in the United States, according to Professor Beck, is that of the Syracuse Saline, New York, which contains 17·35 per cent. of chloride of sodium.

[180] “The salt water” (it is elsewhere called “one of the purest and most concentrated brines known in the world”) “yields about 20 per cent. of pure common salt, and about 2 per cent. of foreign salts; most of the objectionable parts of which are the chloride of lime and the chloride of magnesia, both of which, being very deliquescent, attract moisture from the damp atmosphere, which has the effect to moisten and partially dissolve the common salt, and then, when the mass is exposed to dry air or heat, or both, a hard crust is formed. I believe I have found a remedy for the caking, which is cheap and easily used. It consists in sprinkling over the salt obtained by the evaporation of the water, and heaped up in a bin or box containing a porous bottom of blankets or other like material, a cold solution of the salt as it is concentrated from the lake till crystals begin to be deposited. This concentrated brine, while it will dissolve none of the common salt, will dissolve all the chlorides of calcium and magnesium, and carry them down through the porous bottom, and thus leave the salt purer and better than any now found in our markets. For persons who are obliged to prepare temporarily the salt, as travelers passing through the country, the water of the lake, without concentration, may be used for washing out the deliquescent chlorides, sprinkling the heap of salt by a watering-pot at intervals of two or three hours during a single day, and allowing it to drain and dry at night, and be spread to the sun an hour or two the following morning.”