Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1893 — Waves on the Great Salt Lake. [ARTICLE]

Waves on the Great Salt Lake.

A correspondent of the Companion recently witnessed a most convincing proof of the weight of the salt-laden waters of the Great Salt Lake. A strong gale of wind Was blowing over the lake, and driving its surface into low, white-capped ridges, while along the shore the foam lay like flat banks of new-fallen snow. If it had passed across a lake of fresh water of equal extent that wind would unquestionably have produced such an agitation of its surface that navigation in small boats would have been difficult if not highly perilous. But the waters of the Great Salt Lake, although driven into ridges as just remarked, showed a curious resistance to the wind and the waves, rising to only a slight elevation, moved along with an appearance of lethargy that the eye could not but notice. Yet there was an immense momentum stored up in those low, heavy, slow-moving waves. Venturing into the water at a point where the depth did not exceed four feet the observer found that it was impossible to stand against them. Their sheer weight swept him resistlessly along. The curious buoyancy of the water, containing twenty-two per cent, of salt in solution, increased the helplessness of the bather. He was not submerged, as sometimes occurs in the Atlantic breakers, but was lifted and carried like a cork. It would probably have been impossible to dive through an on-com-ing wave after the matter practiced by bathers along the Atlantic coast. In the Great Salt Lake people are not drowned through sinking, but strangled while still afloat. The bitter water may enter the air passages with fatal effect, but the body continues to float until it reaches the shore or is picked up.