Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/517

Rh travel for days over the desert with the old wave-cut benches circling the mountains far above him.

Pyramid Lake occupies the deepest of the basins of Lake Lahonton. It has a depth now of about 360 feet, but the waters of the ancient lake rose 500 feet higher, making its greatest depth at the time of maximum expansion nearly 1,000 feet. Pyramid Lake has a length of thirty miles and a maximum width of ten miles. It is fed by the Truckee River, which has its source in Lake Tahoe in the high Sierras. The lake is, of course, alkaline, as are all the lakes of the Great Basin, hut the water is not as strongly impregnated as some of them. It is well supplied with large trout, as well as several other kinds of fish. The water is unfit for people to drink, although it answers for stock.

High mountains come down to the lake, leaving in places scarcely room for a road, and although the waters are quiet as a rule, yet they are subject to sudden and violent storms.

At many points within the basin of the former lake, Lahonton, there are strange-appearing deposits of calcareous tufa, either encrusting the rocks or rising in curious and fantastic towers and domes. The waters of the lake were richly impregnated with calcium carbonate, derived in part from the incoming streams, but more largely probably from calcareous springs. As the lake waters receded, the salts in solution became more concentrated and soon began to form chemical precipitates upon projecting rocky points. In the port ion of the basin now