and we are upon short allowance. Game is very scarce, our hunters cannot find any, and our Indians have killed by two buffalo for several days. Of this small stock they would not spare us a mouthful, so it is probably we shall soon be hungry.
The alluvial plain here presents many unequivocal evidences of volcanic action, being thickly covered with masses of lava, and high walls and regular columns of basalt appear in many places. The surrounding country is composed, as usual, of high hills and narrow, stony valleys between them; the hills are thickly covered with a growth of small cedars, but on the plain, nothing flourishes but the everlasting wormwood, or sage as it is here called.
Our encampment on the 8th, was near what we called the "White-clay pits," still on Bear river. The soil is soft chalk, white and tenacious; and in the vicinity are several springs of strong supercarbonated water, which bubble up with all the activity of artificial fountains. The taste was very agreeable [82] and refreshing, resembling Saratoga water, but not so saline.[1] The whole plain to the hills, is covered with little mounds formed of calcareous sinter, having depressions on their summits, from which once issued streams of water. The extent of these eruptions, at some former period, must have been very great. At about half a mile distant, is an eruptive thermal spring of the temperature of 90°, and near this is an opening in the earth from which a stream of gas issues without water.
In a thicket of common red cedars, near our camp, I
- ↑ This is what is now know as Soda Springs, at the upper bend of Bear River. Irving describes it (Rocky Mountains, ii, p. 31) as an area of half a mile, with a dazzling surface of white clay, on which the springs have built up their mounds. It is, in miniature, what is found on a large scale in Yellowstone Park. One geyser exists in the form that Townsend describes. See Palmer's account, in our volume xxx.—Ed.
