The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-04-18

railroad building. The track was laid across the lake on great piles, and was so far completed that locomotive was sent spinning acrossit to test the track About half mile from shore the track sank into the water and the engine plunged into the lake, drowning the fireman.
 At the point where the track dropped 1t is believed by some experts that a bottomless quagmire has been discov- cred in the lake. Some engineers in- dorse this theory, while others oppose 1t.
 Be that as it may, six 40-foot piles of steel have been driven into the hole on top of each other. and the entire 240 feet of steel shot through the bed of the lake and could not be reached. One hundred carloads of stone, or 100000 pounds. were dumped into the hole. and ten minutes later could not be lo- cated with 40-foot poles.
 Some engineers incline to the belief that the pit on the line of the cutoff is a subterranean outlet of Salt Lake, similar to that of the freakish Hum- boldt River in Nevada. but this theory finds dissenters.
 Whenever the hole may be, it seems likely the line of the cutoff must be changed, and it is feared that similar quagmires will be encounted before the track is across the lake.
 Dr. Adolphus T. Kecheler of the Smithsonian Institution, who examined the line of the cutoff last July at the request of MT Hartman, predicted at the time that the trestlework would be insecure and unstable. He declared that the bottom of Great Lake was a solid crust of percipitated materials formerly carried by the water, and that the crust was liable to break through under the weight of the trestle. The engineers employed by MT. Hartman did not accept Dr. Kecheler's theory, and the result is. the collapsed cutoff.
 To illustrate what a scientifice mys- tery the lake is it may be stated that a mile from the Lucin cutoff steel piles were sunk till they encountered 8 solid bed of sodium sulphate as hard as iron. When the piles were left over night the layer of sulphate seemed to soder them in the bed of the lake and it was im- possible to budge them with the aid of the most powerful engines used in rail- road building.
 This is but one of the scientific mys- teries of this wonderful lake, which is now holding up the construction of MT. Harriman's pet schemes.
 Professor J. E. Talmage, the geologist, who is now at the lake Investigating the botomless pit, opposes the theory that the quagmire is an outletAof the lake. He says that the site of the cutoff is the old bed of Bear River, which has been filled with alluvium not solid enough to bear the weight of the trestle. He said to-day
 "At the south end of the lake piles driven into the bed are particularly secure because of a layer of sodium sulphate, or mirabilite, which covers the bottom of the lake to depth of layer of colitic sand, several inches in depth, under which is another layer of sand, cemented by calcareous matter, which is two or more feet in depth.
 "The mirabilite, or as it is known ill commerce, glauber salts, was precipi- tated from the lake water at an earlier stage in it's history
 Tn the work of pile driving at this part of the lake, where Garfield and Saltair beaches are located, it was found to be practically impossible to penetrate the layer of "soda," even with the best steeel-pointed instruments. A method of both simple and effective was adopt ed.
 Steam under a moderate pressure was conveyed to the sodium sulphate bed through iron pipes. The steam dissolved the substance readily, and