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Show 204 NIGHT VOYAGE. rising fast; while lowering clouds spread their black and gloomy pall over the dark, tumultuous waters. With our heavy flat- bottomed boat, rowing against a head wind and a very considerable sea was hard work, especially after a day already spent in severe toil; but we had either to continue on, or to anchor, as there was no shore that we could approach in the dark, on account of the shallowness of the water. We accordingly followed around the edge of the bar, being forced thus to make a circuit of some ten miles, when we finally succeeded in getting to the northward of the shoal, and turned our faces in the proper direction. By this time it was ten o'clock at night, and we had been constantly engaged since daylight. The wind now blowing favourably from the north- west, we again set our sails, the crew was sent to rest in the bottom of the boat, and I continued at the helm during the night. The western and northern part of this extensive flat ( for it is all just above the level of the water) forms, as well as I could judge in the darkness, a hard tufaceous reef, against which a north- west wind dashed the heavy water with great violence. Indeed, for a part of the night, I was guided in my course by the roar of the breakers beating against the reef, reminding me forcibly of similar adventures upon the iron- bound coast of New England, or of the heave of the surf upon the coral- reefs of Florida. Nothing occurred during the night, except grounding upon the tail of a sand- spit making out to the southward from a little island a few miles north of Oarrington's, to which the boys had given the name of « Hat Island." This might easily have been avoided had not the night been so very dark and the lofty range of the Wah-satch Mountains ahead enveloped us in a mantle of such profound blackness that it seemed at every heave of the sea as if we were plunging into the very mouth of Avernus. After shoving the boat over the bar with handspikes, we struck immediately into deep water, and as I now knew every inch of the way, the people again retired to their blankets, being very weary. The night soon began to clear away and the stars to appear, their beams reflected brilliantly in the dense water of the lake. Flashes of vivid lightning blazed up occasionally from behind the mountains, and several meteors, some of great size and dazzling brilliancy, shot down the sky to the north- east. This was the third entire night I had thus spent upon the lake, sitting quietly at the helm, guiding my little bark over its solitary waste. Again was I struck with the deep and pro- |