Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/449

Rh 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 cottonwood. 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 Sutter'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.

Such are the prominent features of this vast Basin or Table-land, in the interior of our continent, but as it is now separated by legislation from its former territorial adjunct, we shall pass at once to