capped with foaming crests, the heavens were hung with black, and the wind blew with great fury.  We would have gone back, now, but we did not dare to turn the boat around, because as soon as she got in the trough of the sea she would upset, of course.  Our only hope lay in keeping her head-on to the seas.  It was hard work to do this, she plunged so, and so beat and belabored the billows with her rising and falling bows.  Now and then one of Higbie’s oars would trip on the top of a wave, and the other one would snatch the boat half around in spite of my cumbersome steering apparatus.  We were drenched by the sprays constantly, and the boat occasionally shipped water.  By and by, powerful as my comrade was, his great exertions began to tell on him, and he was anxious that I should change places with him till he could rest a little.  But I told him this was impossible; for if the steering oar were dropped a moment while we changed, the boat would slue around into the trough of the sea, capsize, and in less than five minutes we would have a hundred gallons of soap-suds in us and be eaten up so quickly that we could not even be present at our own inquest.

But things cannot last always.  Just as the darkness shut down we came booming into port, head on.  Higbie dropped his oars to hurrah—­I dropped mine to help—­the sea gave the boat a twist, and over she went!

The agony that alkali water inflicts on bruises, chafes and blistered hands, is unspeakable, and nothing but greasing all over will modify it —­but we ate, drank and slept well, that night, notwithstanding.

In speaking of the peculiarities of Mono Lake, I ought to have mentioned that at intervals all around its shores stand picturesque turret-looking masses and clusters of a whitish, coarse-grained rock that resembles inferior mortar dried hard; and if one breaks off fragments of this rock he will find perfectly shaped and thoroughly petrified gulls’ eggs deeply imbedded in the mass.  How did they get there?  I simply state the fact —­for it is a fact—­and leave the geological reader to crack the nut at his leisure and solve the problem after his own fashion.

At the end of a week we adjourned to the Sierras on a fishing excursion, and spent several days in camp under snowy Castle Peak, and fished successfully for trout in a bright, miniature lake whose surface was between ten and eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea; cooling ourselves during the hot August noons by sitting on snow banks ten feet deep, under whose sheltering edges fine grass and dainty flowers flourished luxuriously; and at night entertaining ourselves by almost freezing to death.  Then we returned to Mono Lake, and finding that the cement excitement was over for the present, packed up and went back to Esmeralda.  Mr. Ballou reconnoitred awhile, and not liking the prospect, set out alone for Humboldt.