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Show I . 60 NATIONAL WAGON ROAD GUIDE. or visited the many lakes and rivers to the east of the Sierra Nevada mountains, it may not be uninteresting to know something of the geological formation of a country, that instead of furnishing its quota of waters for the formation of navigable streams, actually drinks up the contents of rivers. All have heard of the "Sink. of the Humboldt," and yet but few who have never seen it, have a clear conception of what it really is. In order to be well understood, we will briefly state that for four hundred miles, the Hnmboldt river courses in a general direction southwest, between two ridges of mountains, from five to twenty miles apart, the i~terval between, one almost uninterrupted sage plain or barren sand, except along the very narrow valley of bottom land immediately bordering the river. It is for the greater part of the way extremely serpentine in its course, but kept in a " rell defined channel, till reaching the Big Meadows, twenty miles above the sink. Here the water, no longer a river, is spread out over thousands of acres, converting the otherwise barren plain, into a meadow of unsurpassed fertility. With a width of not less than three miles, it continues down the valley for fifteen n1!les ; the middle portion being the lowest, produces tall rank grass, unfit for .animals; but upon either border, the grass in many places is fine and sweet. There is also upon portions of this marsh, a kind of wiid sugar cane, that animals are very fond of. The Indians also make from it a very fair article of sirup. I NATIONAL WAGON ROAD GUIDE • 61 At the end of fifteen miles, the marsh assumes the appearance of a lake covered here and there with grass, or patches of tall grass growing out of water; a~d h:re mmences the lake or sink of the I-Iun1boldt, It being co .1 but an extension of the marsh into lower ground, unti vegetation ceases to grow, and it becomes a shallow lake, surrounded by coarse grass and rushes, except about three miles at the lower or south end. I-Iere the sand plains on both sides and·end, slope down t~ ~he water's edge, the moisture from the lake however, giving 'fertility to three or four rods in width of a fine salt grass, the water of the lake when the Humboldt ri;er is low, being quite salt. It is about eight or ten m1~es in length and three in width. A few ducks and wild geese are usually seen upon its waters, und they rear their young upon its rnarshy borders. At the south end of the lake, there flo,vs outwardly from it a stream of water t~vo or three feet in depth and ab~ut forty in width, that after coursing a few miles among barren sand ridges, is lost by spreading itself over the level sands of the desert. By many, this · stream losing itself in the sands, is called the sink, but as it only flows during seasons of high " rater, and as there is always a constant and large supply from the Humboldt river at all seasons, the lake can with propriety be, as it generally is, called the sink of the Humboldt. • |