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Show [ 174 J 214 dry, in others covered with ice.; the trave~ling being very bad, through deep ftne sand, rendered tenac;ous by a m1xture of clay. The weather cleared up a little at noou, and we reached the hot springs of which we had seen the vapor the day before. There was a large field of the usual salt grass bore, peculiar to such places. The country otherwise is a perfect barren, without a blade of grass, the only plants being some dwarf Fremontias. We passed the rocky cape, a jagged broken point, bare and torn. The rocks are volcani~, and the hills here have a burnt appearance- cinders and coal occasiOnally appear in g. as at a blacksmith's forge. We crossed the large dry bed of a muddy lake In a southeasterly direction and encamped at night without water and without grass, among sage bushe~ covered with snow. The heavy road made several mules oive out to-day; and a horse, which had made the journey from the States successfully thus far, was left on the trail. January 3.-A fog, so dense that we could not see a hundred yards, covered the conn try, and the men that were sent out after the horses were bewildered and lost; and we were consequently detained at camp until late in the day. Our situation had now become a serious one. We had reached and run over the position where, according to the best maps in my poss ssion, we should have found Mary's lake, or river. We were evidently on the verge of the desert which had been reported to us; and the appearance of the country was so forbidding, that I was afraid to enter it, and determined to bear away to the southward, keeping close along the mountains, in the full expectation of reaching the Buenaventura river. This morning I put every man in the camp on foot-myself, of cou e, among the rest-and in this manner lightened by distribution the load f the animals. We travelled seven or eight miles along the ridge border· ing the valley, and encamped where there ,,.,ere a few bunches of grass on the bed of a hill torrent, without water. There were some large artemi· sias; but the principal plants are chenopodiaceous shrubs. The rock com· posing the mountains is here changed suddenly into white granite. The fog showed the tops of the hills at sunset, and stars enotwh for observations in the early evening, and then closed over us as before~ Latitude by ob· servation, 40° 48' 15". January 4.-The fog to-day was still more dense and the people agatn were bewildered. We travelled a few miles a.round the western point of the ridge, and ?ncamped where there were a few tufts of grass, but .no water. Our anunals now were in a very alarmincr state, and there was til· creased anxiety in the camp. b . . Janu~ry 5.- .Same dense fog continued, and one of the mules ~red rn camp th1s morn mg. I have had occasion to remark on such occasrons as ~hese, that animals which are about to die leave th'c band, and, coming Into the camp, lie down about the fires. We moved to a place where there was a little better grass, about two miles distant. Taplin, one of o~r Lest men, who had gone out on a scouting excursion, ascended a moun~atn near by, and to his great surprise emer(J'cd into a region of brirrht sunshrne, . l · h - o ~ II 10 w uc the upper parts of the rnountain were rrlowing whtle below 3 b d . b ' was o scure m the darkest fog. January 6.-The fog continued the same, and, with Mr. Preuss and Car· son, I ascended the mountain to sketch the leadinrr features of the country, as some m· d't catl·o n of our futu'r e route, while Mr. ~F itzpatrick exp 1o re d t.h te country below. In a very short distance we had ascended above the mrs ' 215 [ 174 J but the view obtained was not very gratifying. The forr had partially cleared off from below when we reached the summit; and in the 'outhwest corner of a basin communicating with that in which W•! had en camped, we saw a lofty column of smoke, 16 miles distant, indicating the presence of hot springs. There, also, appeared to be the outlet of those draining channels of the country; and, as such places afforded always more or less grass, J determined to steer in that direction. The ridge we had ascended appearrd to be composed of fragments of white granite. We saw here traces of sheep and antelope. Entering the neighboring valley, and crossing the bed of another lake after a hard day's travel over ground of yielding mud and sand, we rcachccl the springs, where we found an abundance of grass, which, though only tolerably good, made this place, with reference to tho past, a 1 efreshing and agreeable spot. This is the most extraordinary locality of hot springs we had met durin rr the journey. The. basin of the largest one has a circumference of several hundred feet ; but there is at one extremity a circular space of about ftfteen feet in ~iametcr, entirely occupied by the boiling water. lt boils up at irregular Intervals, and with much noise. The water is clear, and thP- spring deep; a pole about sixteen feet long was easily immersed in the ce ntre, but we had no means of forming a good idea of the depth. It was surrounded on the margin with a border of green grass, and near the shore the temperature of the water was 20Go. We had no means of ascertainincr that of. the centre, where the heat was greatest; but, by dispersing the ~vater Wtth a pole, the temperature at the margin was increa ed to 208°, and in the centre it was doubtless hig;her. By driving the pole towards the bottom, the water was made to boil up with increased force and noise. There are several other interesting places, where water and smoke or gas escape, but they would require a long description. The water is impregnated with common salt, but not so much so as to render it unfit for creneral cookino- · I . b b ' an< a m1xture of snow made it pleasant to drink. Ir~ the immediate neighborhood, the vallev bottom is covered almost exclustvely with chenopodiaceous shrubs of g-reater luxuriance and larc7 er ' ' 0 growth, ~han we have seen them in any preceding part of the journey. I obtatned this evenincr some astronomical observations. Our sit~a.tion now req~1ired caution. Jncluding those which gave out from the InJUred condition of their feet, and those stolen by Indians, we had lost,. since leaving the Dalles of the Columbia, fifteen animals; and of t~ese, ntne had been left in the last few days. I therefore determined, unttl we should reach a country of water and vcgct<'ttion, to feel our \\ay ~head, by having the line of route explored some fift een or twenty miles In auvance, and only to leave a present encampment when the succeedjncr one was known. . 'r' aI.u.n g with me Godey and Cnrson, I made to-day a thorough explora-twn of. the neighboring valleys, and found in a ravine in the bordering l~ountarns a good campincr place where was water in sprincr ' and a suffi-ci. e nt q~antt·t y of · grass fobr a m. gh' t. Overshadm. g the spn. neg s' were some ttees ot .the sweet cottonwood, which, after a long interval of absence, we ~~w a gam with ple:1sure, regarding them as harbinp;ers of a better country. br? us, they w~re eloquent of green prairies and buffalo. vVe found here a oad and platnly marked trail, on which there were tracks of horses and we appeared to have regained one of the thoroughf6lres which pass by the |