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Benders Pass. There seems to be no water on this salt marsh. It is hard & smoothe. A heavy crust of soda covers a large part of it. There are 5 or 6 soda works on it - The one I went to was worked by Chinamen They had great pans over furnaces boiling down the water into which they dumped loads of dirty soday just as scraped up. They shoveled out the sand from the pans. Were boiling with grease brush. Could not learn much of how or what for they were getting the soda.

Found a lot of springs in Benders Pass, one of fairly good water. There is lots of Salt grass but no good feed. Followed up Fish Lake Valley; passed 2 more sinks, salt marshes, or borax marshes, as they are called. Both had a good deal of water on them. The creek in the valley runs quite a stream. The valley is all very strongly alkaline, & rather bare. Salt grass grows on the low land, Atriplex & Sarcobatus & a little Tetradymia in the dry part of the valley. The plants are generally small & far apart. Great stretches of bare gravel have no vegetation.

The Silver Peak Mts. extend along the east side of the valley, beginning at Benders Pass. They are not high, appear perfectly bare, except on the highest part farther south where Cedars grow -

Transcription Notes:
reviewed -@meg_shuler