It was about noon when we had our first view of the Great Salt Lake,
and although I had never then seen an ocean, I could not believe the
existence of anything more wondrous than that huge body of salt water
among the mountains.
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Father says the lake is probably a full hundred miles long, and at its
widest part no less than sixty miles; but this he knows only from that
which he heard from the hunters or trappers, therefore I am not setting
it down as positive information. It seems to me I remember having read
in one of my schoolbooks that it is no more than seventy-five miles
long and thirty miles wide.
However, this much which father says is true: that the lake has no
outlet, and four barrels of its water being evaporated, will produce
nearly a barrel of salt; therefore you can understand how much more
salty it is than a real ocean.
No fish can live in it, and Eben Jordan declared that one of the
trappers at Fort Bridger told him a man could not sink beneath the
surface, so buoyant is the water.
The shore of this great inland sea was white with a crust of soda or
salt, and the odor which came from the stagnant water in the marshes
was so unpleasant as to cause me to feel really ill.