296 MULE-HUNTING EXPEDITION. 



enough how fearfully hot it must have been. 

 One would imagine this district was entirely 

 volcanic, the great desert- waste we crossed being 

 composed of pumice, scoria, and ashes. Perhaps 

 these lesser hills were safety-valves to the more 

 conspicuous mountains in the coast-range of 

 British Columbia and Washington Territory 

 Mounts Baker, Keiney, St. Helens, and others. 



Several pillars, composed of a kind of conglome- 

 rate, quite away from all the surrounding rocks, 

 stand as if man had hewn or rather built them 

 ghostly obelisks, that have a strange and unusual 

 look. I suppose the portions that once joined 

 them to the mass, from which they were detached, 

 must have been crumbled off by Time's fingers, 

 and these solitary pedestals left as records. 

 Round them, too, were scores of tiny heaps of 

 boulders, built, as I am informed, by the Snake 

 Indians, who suppose these pillars are the remains 

 of spirits that have been turned into stone ; but 

 for what object they really pile up these little 

 altars I could never discover, though the Indians 

 tell you as a powerful ' medicine ' ; but who can 

 say what that means? 



May 29^. All night it rained in torrents, 

 and I do not think I ever saw so dark a night ; the 

 rain put out all our fires, and I could neither see 



