7. Frémont Island, so named by Captain Stansbury from the first explorer, who called it, after the rude dissipation of a dream of “tangled wilderness of trees and shrubbery, teeming with game of every description that the neighboring region afforded,” “Disappointment Island.” The Mormons have preferred “Castle Island,” suggested by its mural and turreted peak, that rises above the higher levels. It lies north and northeast from Antelope Island, parallel with the mouth of the Weber River, and south of Promontory Point, the bluff termination of a rocky tongue which separates Bear-River Bay from the body of the lake. Its shape is a semilune, fifteen miles in circumference, abounding in plants, especially the Indian onion, but destitute of wood and water. Here, on the summit, Captain Frémont lost the “brass cover to the object-end of his spy-glass”—disdain not, gentle reader, these little reminiscences!—and Captain Stansbury failed to find the relic.
I was surprised by the want of freshness and atmospheric elasticity in the neighborhood of the lake: the lips were salted as by sea air, but there the similarity ended. We prepared for bathing by unhitching the mules upon the usual picnicking place, a patch of soft white sand between the raised shore of the lake and the water brink. The bank supplies a plentiful stream of water, potable, though somewhat brackish, bitter, and sulphurous: it shows its effects, however, in a clump of plants, wild roses, and the euphorbia of many names, silk-plant, vache à lait, capote de sacarte, and milk-plant. The familiar magpie prevented the solitude of the scene being too impressive. Here was also a vestige of humanity, a kind of “lean-to” of dry stone wall, with the bank for a back-bone: you might have ridden over it without knowing that it belonged to Mrs. Smith of Vermont, now departed, unless warned off by the sudden appearance of what your superior sagacity would have discovered to be a chimney.
THE BATH IN THE GREAT SALT LAKE.The bathing-place is behind the Black Rock. The approach is first over the fine soft white sand, like that of the sea-shore, but shell-less, soppy where it receives the spring-water, and almost a quicksand near the lake. The foot crunches through caked and crusty salt-flakes, here white, there dark green, there dun-colored like bois de vache, and every where the reverse of aromatic, and sinks deep into the everlastingly wet sand below. This leads to the neck of broken, riven stone pavement, whose head is the Black Rock. As the lake is neared, the basalt-like surface becomes red and rusty, the points are diamonded by sparkling spiculæ, and in the hollows and crevices where the waters have dried to salt it gathers in the form of icy lumps. A dreadful shock then awaits the olfactory nerves. The black mud of peculiar drift before alluded to proves to be an aceldama of insects: banks a full foot high, composed of the larvæ, exuviæ, and mortal coils of myriads of worms, musquetoes, gnats, and gallinippers, cast up by the waves, and lining the little bay, as they ferment and fester in the burning sun, or pickle and preserve in the thick brine.[183] Escaping from this mass of fetor, I reached the farther end of the promontory where the Black Rock stood decorously between the bathing-place and the picnic ground, and in a pleasant frame of curiosity descended into the new Dead Sea.
[183] According to Mr. T. R. Peale (quoted by Captain Stansbury, Appendix C), “More than 9⁄10ths of the mass is composed of the larvæ and exuviæ of the Chironomus, or some species of musqueto, probably undescribed.”
I had heard strange accounts of its buoyancy. It was said to support a bather as if he were sitting in an arm-chair, and to float him like an unfresh egg. My experience differs in this point from that of others. There was no difficulty in swimming, nor indeed in sinking. After sundry immersions of the head, in order to feel if it really stang and removed the skin, like a mustard plaster—as described—emboldened by the detection of so much hyperbole, I proceeded to duck under with open eyes, and smarted “for my pains.” The sensation did not come on suddenly; at first there was a sneaking twinge, then a bold succession of twinges, and lastly a steady, honest burning like what follows a pinch of snuff in the eyes. There was no fresh water at hand; so, scrambling upon the rock, I sat there for half an hour, presenting to Nature the ludicrous spectacle of a man weeping flowing tears. A second experiment upon its taste was equally satisfactory; I can easily believe, with Captain Stansbury, that a man overboard has little chance against asphyxiation; vox faucibus hœsit was the least that could be said concerning its effects upon my masticators. Those who try such experiments may be warned that a jug filled at the fresh spring is necessary in more ways than one. The hair on emersion is powdered like the plastered locks of the knights of flamingo-plush and bell-hanging shoulder-knots, and there is a clammy stickiness, which is exceedingly unpleasant. Salt, moreover, may be scraped from the skin—imaginative bathers have compared themselves to Lot’s wife—and the Ethiop, now prosaically termed “nigger,” comes out after a bath bleached, whitewashed, and with changed epidermis.
Notwithstanding the fumet from the kitchen of that genius loci whom I daurna name, we dined with excellent appetite. While the mules were being hitched to, I found an opportunity of another survey from below the Black Rock: this look-out station is sometimes ascended by those gifted with less than the normal modicum of common sense. The lands immediately about the lake are flat, rising almost imperceptibly to the base of abrupt hills, which are broken in places by soft and sandy barriers, irreclaimable for agriculture, but here and there fit for grazing; where springs exist, they burst out at too low a level for irrigation. The meridional range of the Oquirrh, at whose northern point we were standing, divides the Great Salt Lake Valley from its western neighbor Tooele or Tuilla, which in sound curiously resembles the Arabic Tawíleh—the Long Valley. It runs like most of these formations from north to south: it is divided by a transverse ridge declining westward, and not unaptly called Traverse Mountain, from Rush Valley, which again is similarly separated from Cedar Valley. From the point where we stood, the only way to Tooele settlement is round the north point of West Mountain, a bold headland, rugged with rocks and trees. Westward of Tooele Valley, and separated by a sister range to the Oquirrh, lies Spring Valley, so called because it boasts a sweet fountain, and south of this “Skull Valley”—an ominous name, but the evil omen was to the bison.
Bidding a long farewell to that inland briny sea, which apparently has no business there, we turned our faces eastward as the sun was declining. The view had memorable beauties. From the blue and purple clouds, gorgeously edged with celestial fire, shot up a fan of penciled and colored light, extending half way to the zenith, while in the south and southeast lightnings played among the darker mist-masses, which backed the golden and emerald bench-lands of the farther valley. The splendid sunset gave a reflex of its loveliness to the alkaline and artemisia barrens before us. Opposite, the Wasach, vast and voluminous, the store-house of storms, and of the hundred streams that cool the thirsty earth, rose in stern and gloomy grandeur, which even the last smile of day failed to soften, over the subject plain. Northward, to a considerable distance, the lake-lands lay uninterrupted save by an occasional bench and a distant swell, resembling the upper convexity of a thunder-cloud. As we advanced, the city became dimly discernible beyond Jordan, built on ground gently rising away from the lake, and strongly nestling under its protecting mountains. A little to its northeast, a thin white vapor, like the spray of a spouting whale, showed the direction of the Hot Springs: as time wore on it rolled away, condensed by the cooling air, like the smoke of a locomotive before the evening breeze. Then the prominent features of the city came into view, the buildings separated themselves from their neighbors by patches and shades of several green, the streets opened out their regular rows and formal lines; once more we rolled over Jordan’s rickety bridge, and found ourselves again in the Holy City of the Far West.
The ultimate destination of the Judiciary whom I had accompanied was Carson Valley, in the Sierra Nevada, a distance of some hundreds of miles through a wild country where “lifting of hair” is by no means uncommon. The judge, though not a sucking diplomat, had greenly relied upon bona verba at Washington for transportation, escort, and other necessaries which would be easily procurable at Camp Floyd.TRIP TO CAMP FLOYD. It was soon found advisable to apply to the military authorities at the cantonment. The coach, as I have said, had ceased to run beyond Great Salt Lake City. In May, 1858, a contract had been made with Major George Chorpenning to transport mails and passengers—the fare being $120—from Utah to California, he receiving $130,000. This lasted till September, 1859, when the drivers, complaining that the road-agents charged with paying them for eighteen months had expended the “rocks” in the hells of San Francisco, notably evinced their race’s power of self-government by seizing and selling off by auction wagons and similar movable property. On the 20th of March, 1860, it came into the hands of the proprietors of the Eastern line, Messrs. Russell and Co., who ran a mail-wagon first to California, then to Camp Floyd, and lastly, on the 1st of June, finding their expenditure excessive, packed the mails on mules.[184] Single travelers were sometimes thus pushed through, starting on the Wednesdays, once a fortnight; for a party like ours such a proceeding would have been impossible. Consequently, the judge and I set out for Camp Floyd to see what could be done by “Uncle Sam” and his “eagles.”
[184] They carry 50 to 60 lbs.; and the schedule time to Placerville is sixteen days.
Mr. Gilbert—of the firm of Gilbert, Gerrish, and Co., general (Gentile) merchants—offered us seats in his trotting wagon, drawn by a fine tall pair of iron-gray mules, that cost $500 the twain, and were christened Julia and Sally, after, I believe, the fair daughters of the officer who had lately commanded the district. With a fine clear day and a breeze which veiled us with dust-hangings—the highway must be a sea of mud in wet weather—we set out along the county road, leading from the southeastern angle of the Holy City. Our route lay over the strip of alluvium that separates the Wasach Mountains from the waters of Jordan: it is cut by a multitude of streamlets rising from the kanyons; the principal are Mill Creek, Big Cotton-wood, Little Cotton-wood, Dry Cotton-wood, and Willow Creek. The names are translated from the Indians, and we saw from the road traces of the aborigines, who were sweeping crickets and grass-seed into their large conical baskets—among these ragged gleaners we looked in vain for a Ruth. Near Big Cotton-wood, where there is a settlement distant seven miles from the city, an English woman came across the fields and complained that she had been frightened by four Indian braves who had been riding by to bring in a stolen horse. The waters of the kanyons are exceedingly cool, sweet, and clear, and suggested frequent reference to a superior kind of tap which had been stored away within the trap. In proportion as we left the city, the sterility of the River Valley increased; cultivation was unseen except upon the margins of the streams, and the look of the land was “real mean.” In front of us lay the denticulated bench bounding the southern end of the valley.