Page 246 - AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS

Around the World in 80 Days

the lapse of time, and thus at once reduced its breadth and
increased its depth.
The Salt Lake, seventy miles long and thirty-five wide,
is situated three miles eight hundred feet above the sea.

Quite different from Lake Asphaltite, whose depression is
twelve hundred feet below the sea, it contains considerable
salt, and one quarter of the weight of its water is solid
matter, its specific weight being 1,170, and, after being
distilled, 1,000. Fishes are, of course, unable to live in it,
and those which descend through the Jordan, the Weber,
and other streams soon perish.
The country around the lake was well cultivated, for
the Mormons are mostly farmers; while ranches and pens
for domesticated animals, fields of wheat, corn, and other
cereals, luxuriant prairies, hedges of wild rose, clumps of
acacias and milk-wort, would have been seen six months
later. Now the ground was covered with a thin powdering
of snow.
The train reached Ogden at two o’clock, where it
rested for six hours, Mr. Fogg and his party had time to
pay a visit to Salt Lake City, connected with Ogden by a
branch road; and they spent two hours in this strikingly
American town, built on the pattern of other cities of the
Union, like a checker-board, ‘with the sombre sadness of

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