outhward."

This imaginative story aroused interest in the West. In a book
published in 1772, devoted to a description of the province La
Louisiane, the possibility of water communication with the South
Sea is discussed as follows: "It will be of great convenience to
this country, if ever it becomes settled, that there is an easy
communication therewith, and the South Sea, which lies between
America and China, and that two ways: by the north branch of the
great Yellow River, by the natives called the river of the 'Massorites'
(Missouri), which hath a course of five hundred miles, navigable
to its head, or springs, and which proceeds from a ridge of hills
somewhat north of New Mexico, passable by horse, foot, or wagon,
in less than half a day. On the other side are rivers which run
into a great lake that empties itself by another navigable river
into the South Sea. The same may be said of the Meschaouay, up
which our people have been, but not so far as the Baron Lahontan,
who passed on it above three hundred miles almost due west, and
declares it comes from the same ridge of hills above mentioned,
and that divers rivers from the other side soon make a large river,
which enters into a vast lake, on which inhabit two or three great
nations, much more populous and civilized than other Indians; and
out of that lake a great river disembogues into the South Sea."

In 1776 Father Escalante travelled from Santa Fe far to the north
and west. He met Indians who told him of a lake the waters of which
produced a burning sensation when placed upon the skin. This was
probably Great Salt Lake, but it is not thought that he himself
ever saw it. The Escalante Desert, in southern Utah, once covered
by the waters of the lake, is named after this explorer.

Nothing more seems to have been learned of the lake after its discovery
by Bridger until in 1833 Bonneville, a daring leader among the
trappers, organized a party for its exploration. Washington Irving,
in his history of Captain Bonneville, says of the party, "A desert
surrounded them and stretched to the southwest as far as the eye
could reach, rivalling the deserts of Asia and Africa in sterility.
There was neither tree, nor herbage, nor spring, nor pool, nor
running stream, nothing but parched wastes of sand, where horse
and rider were in danger of perishing."

[Illustration: FIG. 52.--SCENE ON GREAT SALT LAKE]

Although decreasing in area so rapidly, Great Salt Lake is still
t