The Wasatch range is now plainly visible, coasting the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake, and winding around to the southwest until they enclose a valley that by Mormon industry has been converted into a veritable paradise, ramified as it is by canals that render it prolific with nearly everything that fertile soil can produce. The Wasatch range forms one of the most important topographical features of the Cordilleran system; in fact, it marks the central line of elevation of this great mountain region, and is the dividing ridge between the arid interior basins of Nevada and the high and relatively well-watered plateau country that drains into the Gulf of California. All the mountain formations here are on a scale of universal magnitude, while in their structure are to be seen the effects of dynamic forces, which have folded and twisted thousands of feet of solid rock as if they were as pliable as so many sheets of paper. To the westward the range presents a bold, abrupt escarpment, rising suddenly out of the plains of the Utah basin, and attains its greatest elevation within a couple of miles of its western base. To the eastward it slopes off very gradually, forming a succession of broad ridges and mountain valleys whose waters drain into the Great Salt Lake through cañons and gorges cut through its main western ridge. The altitude is from 10,000 to 12,000 feet above sea level, so that snow is continuous on the summits, while a condensation of the eastward moving atmospheric currents, produced by the chill on the mountain peaks, furnishes a constant supply of water to the mountain streams, and from which the valleys derive their exceptional fertility. A view of the range, as observed from one of the islands in Salt Lake, presents a mountain wall more than 100 miles in length, of delicately varied outline, the upper portion wrapped in a mantle of snow, but dotted with patches of pine revealing all the intricacies of its rocky structure, and cut through at short intervals by deep cañon gashes of rare grandeur and beauty. A striking feature is presented in the old lake terraces which mark the former beach-line of ancient Lake Bonneville, of which the uppermost is 940 feet above the level of the present lake, and can be traced with few interruptions from one end of the range to the other. Lake Bonneville was formerly the great inland sea of which Great Salt Lake is now a part. It covered nearly one-sixth of what is now Utah territory, and there is evidence that it was connected with the sea by an arm extending to the Gulf of California. The upheaval of mountains through volcanic action reduced its bed and gradually confined its waters to the lower basin of what afterwards came to be known, because of its saline waters, as the Great Salt Lake. [Illustration: BLACK ROCK, GREAT SALT LAKE.]