abruptly from a base of ten or twenty miles to a height of seven or ten thousand feet above the level of the sea. Many large bodies of water are confined in its capacious bosom, and among them are the Utah and Great Salt Lakes. The shores of the latter, extending in length about seventy miles, have been seized and occupied by the Mormons as the seat and centre of their future State. Immense quantities of salt are gathered from its banks when the waters of this inland sea recede during the dry seasons of these lofty plains and table lands. The waters of the Utah, however, are perfectly fresh; and, near the western edge of the Basin, is found the picturesque Pyramid Lake which is also shut in by mountains, and is remarkable for its depth and transparent purity.
To the southward of this, bordering the base of the Sierra Nevada, within the Basin, is a long range of lakes; while many copious rivers disperse their water throughout its ungenial expanse. The chief of these streams is Humboldt River, which rises in the mountains west of the Great Salt Lake, and runs westwardly along the northern side of the Basin towards the Sierra Nevada of California. It courses onward for three hundred miles, without affluents, through a sterile plain, though the valley of its own creation is richly covered with grasses and bordered with willows and cotton wood. This remarkable stream will become of vast importance in the travel towards California, for, rising towards the Salt Lake, it pursues nearly the direct route towards the Pass of the Salmon Trout river through the gorges of the Sierra Nevada, where at an elevation of less than three thousand six hundred feet above the level of the Basin, the pathway descends into the Valley of the Sacramento, and penetrates the State of California only forty miles north of Sutler's original settlement.
The other known rivers of this strange and partially explored region, are the Carson, Bear, Utah, Nicollet and Salmon Trout, most of whose streams, furnished by the snowy peaks of the Sierra, are absorbed in marshes and lakes, or return by evaporation to the icy sources whence they sprang.