Roughing It
unknown in the town and his expedition unsuspected. Our conclave broke
up at nine o’clock, and we set about our preparation diligently and with
profound secrecy. At eleven o’clock we saddled our horses, hitched them
with their long _riatas_ (or lassos), and then brought out a side of
bacon, a sack of beans, a small sack of coffee, some sugar, a hundred
pounds of flour in sacks, some tin cups and a coffee pot, frying pan and
some few other necessary articles. All these things were “packed” on the
back of a led horse—and whoever has not been taught, by a Spanish adept,
to pack an animal, let him never hope to do the thing by natural
smartness. That is impossible. Higbie had had some experience, but was
not perfect. He put on the pack saddle (a thing like a saw-buck), piled
the property on it and then wound a rope all over and about it and under
it, “every which way,” taking a hitch in it every now and then, and
occasionally surging back on it till the horse’s sides sunk in and he
gasped for breath—but every time the lashings grew tight in one place
they loosened in another. We never did get the load tight all over, but
we got it so that it would do, after a fashion, and then we started, in
single file, close order, and without a word. It was a dark night. We
kept the middle of the road, and proceeded in a slow walk past the rows
of cabins, and whenever a miner came to his door I trembled for fear the
light would shine on us and excite curiosity. But nothing happened. We
began the long winding ascent of the canyon, toward the “divide,” and
presently the cabins began to grow infrequent, and the intervals between
them wider and wider, and then I began to breathe tolerably freely and
feel less like a thief and a murderer. I was in the rear, leading the
pack horse. As the ascent grew steeper he grew proportionately less
satisfied with his cargo, and began to pull back on his _riata_
occasionally and delay progress. My comrades were passing out of sight
in the gloom. I was getting anxious. I coaxed and bullied the pack horse
till I presently got him into a trot, and then the tin cups and pans
strung about his person frightened him and he ran. His _riata_ was wound
around the pummel of my saddle, and so, as he went by he dragged me from
my horse and the two animals traveled briskly on without me. But I was
not alone—the loosened cargo tumbled overboard from the pack horse and
fell close to me. It was abreast of almost the last cabin.
A miner came out and said:
“Hello!”
I was thirty steps from him, and knew he could not see me, it was so
very dark in the shadow of the mountain. So I lay still. Another head
appeared in the light of the cabin door, and presently the two men
walked toward me. They stopped within ten steps of me, and one said:
“St! Listen.”
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I could not have been in a more distressed state if I had been escaping
justice with a price on my head. Then the miners appeared to sit down on
a boulder, though I could not see them distinctly enough to be very sure
what they did. One said:
“I heard a noise, as plain as I ever heard anything. It seemed to be
about there—”
A stone whizzed by my head. I flattened myself out in the dust like a
postage stamp, and thought to myself if he mended his aim ever so little
he would probably hear another noise. In my heart, now, I execrated
secret expeditions. I promised myself that this should be my last,
though the Sierras were ribbed with cement veins. Then one of the men
said:
“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.
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, sailless 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.
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The lake is two hundred feet deep, and its sluggish waters are so strong
with alkali that if you only dip the most hopelessly soiled garment into
them once or twice, and wring it out, it will be found as clean as if it
had been through the ablest of washerwomen’s hands. While we camped
there our laundry work was easy. We tied the week’s washing astern of
our boat, and sailed a quarter of a mile, and the job was complete, all
to the wringing out. If we threw the water on our heads and gave them a
rub or so, the white lather would pile up three inches high. This water
is not good for bruised places and abrasions of the skin. We had a
valuable dog. He had raw places on him. He had more raw places on him
than sound ones. He was the rawest dog I almost ever saw. He jumped
overboard one day to get away from the flies. But it was bad judgment.
In his condition, it would have been just as comfortable to jump into
the fire.
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The alkali water nipped him in all the raw places simultaneously, and he
struck out for the shore with considerable interest. He yelped and
barked and howled as he went—and by the time he got to the shore there
was no bark to him—for he had barked the bark all out of his inside, and
the alkali water had cleaned the bark all off his outside, and he
probably wished he had never embarked in any such enterprise. He ran
round and round in a circle, and pawed the earth and clawed the air, and
threw double somersaults, sometimes backward and sometimes forward, in
the most extraordinary manner. He was not a demonstrative dog, as a
general thing, but rather of a grave and serious turn of mind, and I
never saw him take so much interest in anything before. He finally
struck out over the mountains, at a gait which we estimated at about two
hundred and fifty miles an hour, and he is going yet. This was about
nine years ago. We look for what is left of him along here every day.
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A white man cannot drink the water of Mono Lake, for it is nearly pure
lye. It is said that the Indians in the vicinity drink it sometimes,
though. It is not improbable, for they are among the purest liars I ever
saw. [There will be no additional charge for this joke, except to
parties requiring an explanation of it. This joke has received high
commendation from some of the ablest minds of the age.]
There are no fish in Mono Lake—no frogs, no snakes, no
polliwigs—nothing, in fact, that goes to make life desirable. Millions
of wild ducks and sea-gulls swim about the surface, but no living thing
exists _under_ the surface, except a white feathery sort of worm, one
half an inch long, which looks like a bit of white thread frayed out at
the sides. If you dip up a gallon of water, you will get about fifteen
thousand of these. They give to the water a sort of grayish-white
appearance. Then there is a fly, which looks something like our house
fly. These settle on the beach to eat the worms that wash ashore—and any
time, you can see there a belt of flies an inch deep and six feet wide,
and this belt extends clear around the lake—a belt of flies one hundred
miles long. If you throw a stone among them, they swarm up so thick that
they look dense, like a cloud. You can hold them under water as long as
you please—they do not mind it—they are only proud of it. When you let
them go, they pop up to the surface as dry as a patent office report,
and walk off as unconcernedly as if they had been educated especially
with a view to affording instructive entertainment to man in that
particular way. Providence leaves nothing to go by chance. All things
have their uses and their part and proper place in Nature’s economy: the
ducks eat the flies—the flies eat the worms—the Indians eat all
three—the wild cats eat the Indians—the white folks eat the wild
cats—and thus all things are lovely.
Mono Lake is a hundred miles in a straight line from the ocean—and
between it and the ocean are one or two ranges of mountains—yet
thousands of sea-gulls go there every season to lay their eggs and rear
their young. One would as soon expect to find sea-gulls in Kansas. And
in this connection let us observe another instance of Nature’s wisdom.
The islands in the lake being merely huge masses of lava, coated over
with ashes and pumice-stone, and utterly innocent of vegetation or
anything that would burn; and sea-gull’s eggs being entirely useless to
anybody unless they be cooked, Nature has provided an unfailing spring
of boiling water on the largest island, and you can put your eggs in
there, and in four minutes you can boil them as hard as any statement I
have made during the past fifteen years. Within ten feet of the boiling
spring is a spring of pure cold water, sweet and wholesome.
So, in that island you get your board and washing free of charge—and if
nature had gone further and furnished a nice American hotel clerk who
was crusty and disobliging, and didn’t know anything about the time
tables, or the railroad routes—or—anything—and was proud of it—I would
not wish for a more desirable boarding-house.
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Half a dozen little mountain brooks flow into Mono Lake, but not a
stream of any kind flows out of it. It neither rises nor falls,
apparently, and what it does with its surplus water is a dark and bloody
mystery.
There are only two seasons in the region round about Mono Lake—and these
are, the breaking up of one Winter and the beginning of the next. More