oor my comrades emerged from the
gloom; they had caught the horses and were waiting for a clear coast
again. We remounted the cargo on the pack horse and got under way, and
as day broke we reached the "divide" and joined Van Dorn. Then we
journeyed down into the valley of the Lake, and feeling secure, we halted
to cook breakfast, for we were tired and sleepy and hungry. Three hours
later the rest of the population filed over the "divide" in a long
procession, and drifted off out of sight around the borders of the Lake!

Whether or not my accident had produced this result we never knew, but at
least one thing was certain--the secret was out and Whiteman would not
enter upon a search for the cement mine this time. We were filled with
chagrin.

We held a council and decided to make the best of our misfortune and
enjoy a week's holiday on the borders of the curious Lake. Mono, it is
sometimes called, and sometimes the "Dead Sea of California." It is one
of the strangest freaks of Nature to be found in any land, but it is
hardly ever mentioned in print and very seldom visited, because it lies
away off the usual routes of travel and besides is so difficult to get at
that only men content to endure the roughest life will consent to take
upon themselves the discomforts of such a trip. On the morning of our
second day, we traveled around to a remote and particularly wild spot on
the borders of the Lake, where a stream of fresh, ice-cold water entered
it from the mountain side, and then we went regularly into camp. We
hired a large boat and two shot-guns from a lonely ranchman who lived
some ten miles further on, and made ready for comfort and recreation.
We soon got thoroughly acquainted with the Lake and all its
peculiarities.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Mono Lake lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, eight thousand
feet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains two thousand
feet higher, whose summits are always clothed in clouds. This solemn,
silent, sail-less sea--this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on earth
--is little graced with the picturesque. It is an unpretending expanse
of grayish water, about a hundred miles in circumference, with two
islands in its centre, mere upheavals of rent and scorched and blistered
lava, snowed over with gray banks and drifts of pumice-stone and ashes,
the winding sheet of the dead volcano, whose vast crater the lake has
seized upon and occupied.

The l