A giant hop and skip north from the Grand Canyon would bring one to the State of Utah, where there is a great lake, but this Great Lake is different from the five “Great Lakes.” The water in the five Great Lakes is fresh, the water in this great lake is salt, so it is called Great Salt Lake, though it is really a little ocean. As in the case of the ocean, rivers run into the Great Salt Lake, but no rivers run out of it.

What makes it salt ?

The same thing that makes the ocean salt.

What makes the ocean salt?

The ground through which rivers flow is salt. If you ever tasted the ground, you would know it, but, of course, I don’t suppose you ever have, unless you have fallen and gotten some in your mouth or on your lips. Rivers, as they flow along, wash some of this salt out of the ground, carry it along, and dump it into the ocean. They carry so little salt at a time you would never know by tasting the river water that it was salt at all, but the rivers pour in this ever so little bit of salt all the time, all the time, and so the salt gradually does collect in the ocean and in Great Salt Lake, for there is no way for the salt to go out once it’s in the ocean or the lake. The water gets out of the lake as it does out of the ocean—by rising into the air as vapor—evaporating, we call it—but the salt doesn’t evaporate, it can’t rise into the air, and so it has no way of getting out.

The Great Salt Lake is getting saltier and saltier all the time. It is already much saltier than the ocean. Salt water holds up a person or anything in it much better than fresh water, and the saltier the water the more it holds the person up. So in Great Salt Lake you couldn’t drown whether you knew how to swim or not. You can stand in the water or sit in the water or lie down on the water as you would on a sofa. You can read the paper or eat your luncheon while sitting in the water, but you have to be very careful not to get any of the water in your eyes or in any small cut you may have on your hands or body, for the salt water is so strong it smarts. Some day the ocean will be as salty as Great Salt Lake, for the ocean too is slowly, very slowly, getting saltier and saltier all the time. Then, even if there were a shipwreck, people would not drown—they would bob about in the sea like corks.