vision can penetrate, until lost in the haze; while, here and there,
isolated rocks lift their rugged heads above the dreary level, like
islets out of the sea. It is said there are many evidences that go to
prove this desert to have once been covered by the waters of the great
inland sea that still, in places, laves its eastern borders with its
briny flood. I am informed there are many miles of smooth, hard, salt-flats,
over which a 'cycler could skim like a bird; but I scarcely think enough
of bird-like skimming to go searching for it on the American Desert. A
few miles east of Matlin the road leads over a spur of the Red Dome
Range, from whence I obtain my first view of the Great Salt Lake, and
soon I am enjoying a long-anticipated bath in its briny waters. It is
disagreeably cold, but otherwise an enjoyable bath. One can scarce sink
beneath the surface, so strongly is the water impregnated with salt. For
dinner, I reach Kelton, a town that formerly prospered as the point from
which vast quantities of freight were shipped to Idaho. Scores of huge
freight-wagons are now bunched up in the corrals, having outlived their
usefulness since the innovation from mules and "overland ships " to
locomotives on the Utah Northern Railway. Empty stores and a general air
of vanished prosperity are the main features of Kelton to-day; and the
inhabitants seem to reflect in their persons the aspect of the town;
most of them being freighters, who, finding their occupation gone, hang
listlessly around, as though conscious of being fit for nothing else.
>From Kelton I follow the lake shore, and at six in the afternoon arrive
at the salt-works, near Monument Station, and apply for accommodation,
which is readily given. Here is erected a wind-mill, which pumps the
water from the lake into shallow reservoirs, where it evaporates and
leaves a layer of coarse salt on the bottom. These people drink water
that is disagreeably brackish and unsatisfactory to one unaccustomed to
it, but which they say has become more acceptable to them, from habitual
use, than purely fresh water. This spot, is the healthiest and most