“Three grammes of this salt in dry powder, cleared of its earthy impurities, gave carbonic acid 0·9030 of a gramme, which would indicate 1·73239 grammes of the sesquicarbonate. The other salts were found to be the muriate and sulphate of soda: the proportions were not determined.”
Four miles beyond this “Waterless Lake”—Bahr bila Ma as the Bedouin would call it—we arrived at Rock Independence,ROCK INDEPENDENCE. and felt ourselves in a new region, totally distinct from the clay formation of the mauvaises terres over which we have traveled for the last five days. Again I was startled by its surprising likeness to the scenery of Eastern Africa: a sketch of Jiwe la Mkoa, the Round Rock in eastern Unyamwezi,[88] would be mistaken, even by those who had seen both, for this grand échantillon of the Rocky Mountains. It crops out of an open plain, not far from the river bed, in dome shape wholly isolated, about 1000 feet in length by 400-500 in breadth; it is 60 to 100 feet in height,[89] and in circumference 11⁄2 to 2 miles. Except upon the summit, where it has been weathered into a feldspathic soil, it is bare and bald; a scanty growth of shrubs protrudes, however, from its poll. The material of the stern-looking dome is granite, in enormous slabs and boulders, cracked, flaked, seared, and cloven, as if by igneous pressure from below. The prevailing tradition in the West is, that the mass derived its name from the fact that Colonel Frémont there delivered an Independence-day oration; but read a little farther. It is easily ascended at the northern side and the southeastern corner, and many climb its rugged flanks for a peculiarly Anglo-American purpose—Smith and Brown have held high jinks here. In Colonel Frémont’s time (1842), every where within six or eight feet of the ground, where the surface is sufficiently smooth, and in some places sixty or eighty feet above, the rock was inscribed with the names of travelers. Hence the Indians have named it Timpe Nabor, or the Painted Rock, corresponding with the Sinaitic “Wady Mukattab.” In the present day, though much of the writing has been washed away by rain, 40,000-50,000 souls are calculated to have left their dates and marks from the coping of the wall to the loose stones below this huge sign-post. There is, however, some reason in the proceeding; it does not in these lands begin and end with the silly purpose, as among climbers of the Pyramids, and fouilleurs of the sarcophagi of Apis, to bequeath one’s few poor letters to a little athanasia. Prairie travelers and emigrants expect to be followed by their friends, and leave, in their vermilion outfit, or their white house-paint, or their brownish-black tar—a useful article for wagons—a homely but hearty word of love or direction upon any conspicuous object. Even a bull or a buffalo’s skull, which, lying upon the road, will attract attention, is made to do duty at this Poste Restante.
[88] I crave the reader’s pardon for referring him to my own publications; but the only account of this Round Rock which has hitherto been published is to be found in the “Lake Regions of Central Africa,” chap. viii.
[89] Colonel Frémont gives its dimensions as 650 yards long and 40 feet high.
I will here take the liberty of digressing a little, with the charitable purpose of admiring the serious turn with which the United States explorers perform their explorations.
Colonel Frémont[90] thus calls to mind the earnest deeds of a bygone day. “One George Weymouth was sent out to Maine by the Earl of Southampton, Lord Arundel, and others, and in the narrative of their discoveries he says, ‘The next day we ascended in our pinnace that part of the river which lies more to the westward, carrying with us a cross—a thing never omitted by any Christian traveler—which we erected at the ultimate end of our route.’ This was in the year 1605, and in 1842 I obeyed the feeling of early travelers, and left the impressions of the cross deeply engraved on the vast rock, one thousand miles beyond the Mississippi, to which discoverers have given the national name of Rock Independence.”
[90] Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, p. 72.
Captain Stansbury[91] is not less scrupulous upon the subject of traveling proprieties. One of his entries is couched as follows: “Sunday, June 10, barometer 28·82, thermometer 70°. The camp rested: it had been determined, from the commencement of the expedition, to devote this day, whenever practicable, to its legitimate purpose, as an interval of rest for man and beast. I here beg to record, as the result of my experience, derived not only from the present journey, but from the observations of many years spent in the performance of similar duties, that, as a mere matter of pecuniary consideration, apart from all higher obligations, it is wise to keep the Sabbath.”
[91] Stansbury’s Expedition, ch. i., p. 22.
Lieutenant W. F. Lynch, United States Navy, who in 1857 commanded the United States Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea,[92] and published a narrative not deficient in interest, thus describes his proceedings at El Meshra, the bathing-place of the Christian pilgrims: