'The Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society. From December 1854 to March 1856. (New Issue.) Edited by the Secretary. Volume XII.' [‎12] (31/258)

PROCEEDINGS OP THE SOCIETY.
xii
If I have bestowed more space on the Great Salt Lake than I ought to have
done, or than time will allow to devote to other depressions of equal interest, it is
because it has but lately become known to us, and I am aware of no single paper
or work in which all the information that has been collected regarding it is to be
found in moderate compass,—as already mentioned, the latest of our physical
atlasses and physical geographies fail to bring our information down to this point.
I have no doubt it will be treated with his usual care and ability by my friend
Mr. Keith Johnstone in the new edition of .his great work now preparing for the
press.
There are besides the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, whose mere magnitude is
the point of least interest about it, two depressions, or continental river basin of
no discharge north of Mexico, on the highlands betwixt the Gulf of California and
Rio del Norte, one of about 200 by 50 miles, betwixt the 29 th and 33rd parallels,
another about four times this size, nearly under the tropics. Both contain salt
lakes of some magnitude, with fresh-water streams flowing into them. Beyond
this little is known regarding them. The Rio Grande, about 300 miles in length,
is the largest river in this quarter swallowed up by evaporation ; and but for
these continental streams the country would be doomed to a state of perpetual
sterility—a few showers occurring in September being all the rain that ever falls
in the neighbourhood.
In the great Andes plateau in South America stretching from the Tropic of
Cancer northwards for the space of 1,200 miles, with a mean breadth of 200,
is a depression with a surface area equal about that of the Red Sea. This basin
is about 12,000 feet above the level of the ocean, the principal lake being that of
Titicaca, occurring at an altitude equal to that of Teneriffe. It is about 26,000
square miles in area, and 700 feet in depth. The scenery and verdure around
seem in the last degree rich and beautiful, and the climate delightful.
There are no continental river basins or valleys of any extent in any part of
Europe, the rains being sufficiently abundant, and evaporation moderate enough,
to enable the moisture which falls to accumulate in the valleys till it forms
lakes which discharge their waters into rivers, all finding their way to the
sea ; and the only depressions at all resembling those under consideration,
aid of the same character, though of inconsiderable depth, and due, doubtless,
to the same causes, are those in Holland—the Lake Harlaem and the Zuyder
Zee.
We know so little of Central Africa that we are unable to speak of its charac
teristic features with anything like certainty. From the magnitude of some of
the lakes known to exist, and the streams made mention of, compared to the scan
tiness of the discharge of fresh water into the sea, there is reason to believe in con
tinental river basins great in number and vast in size. The only depressions well
known to us are those of the lake Mareotis, on the Mediterranean shore, close
by Alexandria, of the Bitter Lakes in the Isthmus of Suez, like Mareotis, and the
Natron Lakes, all in Lower Egypt, and Lake Assal, off the shores of the Gulf of
Aden, a short way into Abyssinia. The first of these depressions has probably