“I’ll tell you what! Welch knew
what he was talking about when he said he saw Whiteman
to-day. I heard horses—that was the
noise. I am going down to Welch’s, right
away.”
They left and I was glad. I did not care whither
they went, so they went. I was willing they
should visit Welch, and the sooner the better.
As soon as they closed their cabin door 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.
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.
