Description |
April-lune 1850 truder upon his quiet domain, bounded away & was soon lost to sight. When the wind blows violently from the N & W. this sandy plain is covered by the lake making Presq isle a complete & proper Island. The hills are composed of black lime & sandstone & the W. side descending perpendicularly down to the plain presents a bold cliff about 800 feet high of which I made a drawing116 Tuesday June Il. I spent the day in wandering up and down making sketches where the scenery appeared worthy of being transposed. II7 The grease & sage brush, all that this section of country can boast as a substitute for trees, diversifies by the vivid green of their foliage the otherwise too monotonous landscape & its frequent occurrence redeems it from total barreness. The grease bush appears to be of a more hardy nature than sage, as the former is met upon salt plains where no water is & the sage is found at a greater distance from the lake upon the benches of the mountains A storm of wind & hail occurred to day this has happened every day during our stay at this place118 Wednesday ]une 12 Left the 18th Camp119 in company with Mr C. we crossed the sand flat & reached the chain of mountains be- fore mentioned as running southward, & whose northern extrem- ity is riven into a thousand fantastic shapes.12' The rugged lime- i16 There is no record of this sketch. 117 One of these views is probably that found opposite page 202 in the Stansbury Report and is captioned "View from Strong's Knob, Looking South.-Great Salt Lake." Another picture, entitled "Cavern at Strongsnob," is one of the fourteen unpublished sketches which accompanied the John Hudson letters. Captain Stansbury described this last scene- "quite a large cave was discovered in the hill side, about 50 or 60 X 25 X 10 in height. The rock is black & grey limestone. " Stansbury, Journal, vol. 5,11 June. lT8 The yawl finally arrived shortly after breakfast with a supply of drinking water from Indian Springs. The crew was battered, frozen, and starved from being buffeted around the lake by a storm through most of the night. At the height of the gale, the captain observed the water driven some seven or eight miles up on the low sandy beach with a return to the old boundaries after the storm subsided. Ibid., vol. 5,ll June. Hudson No.20. is mistaken about the number Carrington, Journal, 12 June, Carrington correctly s of the new camp. p. 34. calls 120 The Lakeside Mountains along the southwestern shore of the lake are divided into northern and southern segments covering a total distance of thirty miles. Black Mountain, the highest peak, reaches an elevation of 6,620 feet, some 2,420 feet above the level of Great Salt Lake. The structure of the range is composed of "westerly dips and open north- south folds, especially in the western blocks." Gwynn, Great Salt Luke, p. 59. 177 |