Captain Bonneville Doubts This Report, Or That The Men
Accomplished The Circumnavigation, Because, He Says, The Lake
Receives Several Large Streams From The Mountains Which Bound It
To The East.
In the spring, when the streams are swollen by rain
and by the melting of the snows, the lake rises several feet
above its ordinary level during the summer, it gradually subsides
again, leaving a sparkling zone of the finest salt upon its
shores.
The elevation of the vast plateau on which this lake is situated,
is estimated by Captain Bonneville at one and three-fourths of a
mile above the level of the ocean. The admirable purity and
transparency of the atmosphere in this region, allowing objects
to be seen, and the report of firearms to be heard, at an
astonishing distance; and its extreme dryness, causing the wheels
of wagons to fall in pieces, as instanced in former passages of
this work, are proofs of the great altitude of the Rocky Mountain
plains. That a body of salt water should exist at such a height
is cited as a singular phenomenon by Captain Bonneville, though
the salt lake of Mexico is not much inferior in elevation.
To have this lake properly explored, and all its secrets
revealed, was the grand scheme of the captain for the present
year; and while it was one in which his imagination evidently
took a leading part, he believed it would be attended with great
profit, from the numerous beaver streams with which the lake must
be fringed.
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