l about them the ground was covered with
pieces of broken lava, largely composed of gravel stones that had been
welded together by intense heat. A half mile or so from the mountain
stood a block of the same material, which was nearly square in shape and
larger than a thirty-by-forty-foot barn.

We made good time here after coming off the mountain, although we
suffered intensely for want of water, the sun being very hot. However,
we soon found ourselves in the "Thousand Spring Valley," and, being
influenced by its name, expected to have, for that day at least, all the
water we could drink. But, as is sometimes the case, there was

"Water, water everywhere,
But not a drop to drink."

Near the entrance of the valley, which is about thirty miles long, is
the Great Rock Spring, deriving its name, I presume, from its flowing
out from under an immense rock, forming a pool or basin of the brightest
and clearest of water, but so warm that neither man nor beast could
drink it. We all waded around through the basin, the water being about
two feet deep. After a few more miles, we could see ahead of us clouds
of steam vapor rising from the earth in various places. We came to the
first group of boiling springs at noon, nearly famished for water that
one could drink. We turned out for a resting-while. Some went to look
for cool water, and found none, while others made some coffee with
boiling water from a spring, of which there were hundreds on a very few
acres of ground. Some of the springs were six to ten feet across and
three or four inches deep. We set our coffee-pots right in a spring and
made coffee in a very short time. The hot sun pouring down on us, and
boiling springs all about us, and no cold water to drink, made the place
desirable for only one thing--to get away from.

Toward night we turned off into the hills and looked for water, where,
tramping over the rocks and brush, supperless, until nearly midnight, we
found a most delicious spring. We all drank together, men and animals,
and together laid down and slept.

A little farther along, one day at noon, while we were drinking our
coffee, two wild geese flew over and down the river. Watching them sail
along as if to light at a certain point, I took my rifle and followed.
The trail led to the right and over a range of hills, coming into the
valley again several miles ahead, and the direction in which I was
pursuing the geese being a tangent, I soon lost