7200 above sea level. It lies twenty miles to the northwest of the city, and the narrow passage between it and the opposite plain is fordable. This island is surrounded on the north by a tufa bed twelve feet deep; eastward by six feet of water; southeast and south by shoals; and westward by a deposit of black mud: the deepest sounding in the lake, thirty-five feet, is found between it and Stansbury Island. Off the northwestern coast is a rock, called, after its principal peculiarity, Egg Island: in the eastern cliff there is said to be a cave, described to resemble the Blue Grotto at Capri, which has been partially explored. Formerly there was a small pinnace on the "Big Shallow;" it has either been wrecked or broken up for fuel.[1] Antelope Island contains arid ravines and a few green valleys, besides a spring of pure water, and, being safe from Indians, it is much esteemed as a grazing-place.
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 warn-
- ↑ In the "Revue des Deux-Mondes" (April, 1861) we are told that, "Pendant l'été un petit bateau à vapeur fait un service régulier sur le Lac Salé." Fresh proof, if it be required, how difficult, or rather how impossible, it is for any amount of talent or ingenuity in a reviewer to supply the want of actual eye-seeing information. The "Lac Salé" is not yet come.
