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Show A OTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 55 even be said to occupy the whole space from 34° to 45° between the Rocky l\Iountains proper and the Californian snowy coast chain. This space, a kind of broad longitudinal valley like that of the Lake of Titicaca, has been called, by Joseph Walker, a traveller well acquainted with these western regions, and by Captain Fremont, "The Great Basin." It is a terra incognita of at least 128,000 square miles in extent, arid, almost entirely without human inhabitants, and full of salt lakes, the largest of which is 4200 English feet above the level of the sea, and is connected with the narrow lake of Utah. (Fremont, Report of the Exploring Expedit.ion, pp. 15-1 and 273-276.) The last mentioned lake receives the abundant waters of the "Rock River;" Timpan Ogo, in the Utah language. Father Escalante, in journeying, in 1776, from Santa Fe del Nuevo Mexico to Monterey in New California, discovered Fremont's "Great Salt Lake," and, confounding lake and river, gave it the name of Laguna de Timpanogo. As such I inserted it in my map of Mexico; and this has given rise to much uncritical discussion on the assumed non-existence of a great inland salt lake in North America-a ques tion previou ly raised by the well-informed American geographer Tanner. (Humboldt, Atlas Mexicain, planche 2; Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, t. i. p. 231, t. ii. pp. 243, 313, and 420; Fremont, Upper California, 1848, p. 9; and, also, Duflot de Mofras, Exploration de l'Oregon, 1844, t. ii. p. 40.) Gallatin says expressly, in the Memoir on the Aboriginal Races in the Archreologia Americana, vol. ii. p. 140, "General Ashley and Mr. J. S. Smith have found the Lake Timpanogo in the same latitude and longitude nearly as bad been assigned to it in Humboldt's Atlas of Mexico." I have dwelt on the remarkable swelling of the ground in the region of the Rocky Mountains, because, doubtless, by its elevation and extent, it exercises an influence hitherto but little considered, on the climate of the whole continent of North America, to the south and east. In the extensive, continuous plateau, Fremont saw the waters covered with ice every night in the month of August. Nor is the elevation of this region less important as respects the social state and progress of the great United States of North America. Although the elevation of the line of the separation of the waters nearly equals that of the Passes of the Simplon (6170 French, or |