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, Reiney, 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. JI 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 29th.—All night it rammed in torrents, 
and I donot think I ever saw so dark a night; the 
rain put out all our fires, and I could neither see 
