It is just possible that this wonderful lake may in course of time disappear entirely.  Some years ago its width was over 40 miles on an average, and its length was very much greater.  Now it barely measures 100 miles from end to end and the width varies from 10 to 60 miles.  In the depth the gradual curtailment has been more apparent.  At one time the average depth was many hundred feet, and several soundings of 1,000 feet were taken, with the result reported, in sailors’ parlance, of “No bottom.”  At the present time the depth varies from 40 to 100 feet, and appears to be lessening steadily, presumably because of the extraordinary deposit of solid matter from the very dense waters with which it is filled.

The lake is a bathers’ paradise, and the arrangements for bathing from Garfield Beach are like everything else in the land of the Mormons, extraordinary to a degree.  In one year there were nearly half a million bathers accommodated at the four principal resorts, and so rapidly are these bathing resorts and establishments multiplied, that the day is not distant when every available site on the eastern shore of the lake will be appropriated for the purpose.  As a gentleman who has bathed in this lake again and again says, it seems preposterous to speak of the finest sea-bathing on earth a thousand miles from the ocean, although the bathing in Great Salt Lake infinitely surpasses anything of the kind on either the Atlantic or Pacific coasts.

The water contains many times more salt, and much more soda, sulphur, magnesia, chlorine, bromine and potassium than any ocean water on the globe.  It is powerful in medicinal virtues, curing or benefiting many forms of rheumatism, rheumatic gout, dyspepsia, nervous disorders and cutaneous diseases, and it acts like magic on the hair of those unfortunates whose tendencies are to bald-headedness.  It is a prompt and potent tonic and invigorant of body and mind, and then there is no end of fun in getting acquainted with its peculiarities.  A first bath in it is always as good as a circus, the bather being his or her own trick mule.  The specific gravity is but a trifle less than that of the Holy Land Dead Sea.

The human body will not and cannot sink in it.  You can walk out in it where it is fifty feet deep, and your body will stick up out of it like a fishing-cork from the shoulders upward.  You can sit down in it perfectly secure where it is fathoms deep.  Men lie on top of it with their arms under their heads and smoking cigars.  Its buoyancy is indescribable and unimaginable.  Any one can float upon it at the first trial; there is nothing to do but lie down gently upon it and float.

But swimming is an entirely different matter.  The moment you begin to “paddle your own canoe,” lively and—­to the lookers-on—­mirth-provoking exercises ensue.  When you stick your hand under to make a stroke your feet decline to stay anywhere but on top; and when, after an exciting tussle with your refractory pedal extremities, you again get them beneath the surface, your hands fly out with the splash and splutter of a half-dozen flutter wheels.  If, on account of your brains being heavier than your heels, you chance to turn a somersault, and your head goes under, your heels will pop up like a pair of frisky, dapper ducks.