294 MULE-HUNTING EXPEDITION. 
quite black, and not the vestige of a plant visible. 
The black expanse had exactly the appearance 
of a bed of rocks, over which the tide ebbed 
and flowed. Crossed a creek fifteen miles from 
camp, deep and swift, and about fifteen yards 
wide ; five miles beyond this cross another creek, 
about half the size. Leave the timber and come 
out on a wide sandy kind of desert, covered with 
wild-sage and stunted juniper-trees, frightfully 
dusty, and most tiresome for the mules; no chance 
of camping until quite over it, which is twenty 
miles. After a weary march reach a creek, where 
I stop; a capital camping-ground, with fine grass 
and water. Passed close along the bases of the 
Three Sisters, lofty mountains, at this time covered 
with snow. Sawa great many abandoned lodges, 
but no Indians. The sandy places were quite 
alive with the Oregon horned toad (Tapaya 
Douglassii), which is a lizard really very harm- 
less, and particularly ugly. Every stream too 
was thronged with beaver. 
May 28th.—Mules all in at 4 a.m. Got off in 
good time: weather not nearly so cold. Looked 
over the creek, but saw no gold, but any quan- 
tity of beaver-workings; trees four feet round 
had been cut down by them. Passed through a 
tract of lightly-timbered land and open grassy 
