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TV* Dead Sea el Nn*.There are roan? things in the Qreet Basio, or along its rim, whioh excite ihe interest o* traveller.*. A correspondent asks os to tell him *' whether Mono Lake is aetaalljr the dead sea it is represented to be. 1 am told that its bitter waters are fatal to all living things If you can, will you please say something about that singular body of water.” We gather from the “ Report on the Mineral resource* of the States and Ter ritorie* west of ihe Rocky Mountains, thatMono Lake lies ten miles south weet of the division line between California and Nevada, and ia fourteen miles I'mg and nine wide It has never been sounded, bat a trial ia aaid to haeo been made with a line of three hundred feet, which failed to reach the bottom. By chemical analysis a gallon of the water weighing eight pounds waa found to eoataia 1,200 grains of solid matter, coosistiog principally of chloride of soda, borax and silicia. These substances render the water ao acrid and nauseating that it is unfit for drinking or even bathing. Leather immersed in it is soon destroyed by its corrosive properties, and no animal, not even a frog or a fish, can exi«t in the water for more than a short time. The only thing able to live with or upon the waters of this lake, is a speoies of fly, which Bering from larvae bred in its bosom, after an ephemeral life, dies, and collecting on the surface, is drilled to the shore, where the remains collect in vast quantities, and are fed upon by the ducks or gathered by the Indians, with whom they are a staple article of food. Nestling under the eastern watershed of the Sierra, Mono Lake receives sev. eral considerable tributaries; and although destitute of any outlet, such is the aridity of the atmosphere, that it is always kept at nearly a uniform level by the process of evaporation. So dense and sluggish is the water rendered through super-saturation with various salts and other foreign matters, that only the strongest winds raise a ripple on its surface. As the Sierra in this neighborhood reaches nearly its greatest altitude, the scenery about Mono Lake is varied and majestic, some parts of it beiug at the same time marked by a most cheerless and desolate aspect. The bitter and fatal waters of this lake render it literally a defcd sea, and all its surroundings—wild, gloomy and foreboding —are suggestive of sterility and death. The decomposing action of the water is shown by its effect on the bodies of a company of Indi an«, twenty or thirty in number, who, while seeking to escape fiom tlieir white pursuers, took refuge in tl.e lake, where they were shot by their enemies, who left ihetu in the water. In the course Of n few weeks not a vestige of their bodies was to be seen, even the bones having been decomposed by this powerful solvent. Mineral curiosities abound in theudc»hsneighborhood of Mono Lake, among which are numberless deposits iu the shape of pine | v trees.—Reveille. I t
Newspaper Details
Walla Walla Statesman
Walla Walla, Washington, US
Fri, Jan 29, 1869
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Dean T.
USA 30 Nov 2022
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