92 
yet the fringes of shrubs along the banks made it impossible to 
go across the country and we were compelled to follow the ser- 
pentine course of the river where the distance between two points 
was more than twice that of a straight line in many places. At 
sunset of the first day we made a small patch of dried mud a 
hundred yards back of the shore and to this we carried our 
camping outfit through three feet of water and mud, impassable 
Fic. 26. Alkaline plain near Volcano Lake, Baja California. 
for the boats. This place, no larger than the floor of a dwelling 
house and but few inches above the water level, was the only 
solid ground to be encountered in two days’ travel, and finding 
it was due entirely to the intimate knowledge of our Indian of the 
topography of the country. On April 4 we arrived at a point 
where the main channel of the river runs along the actual base 
of a spur of the Cucopa Mountains for several hundred yards, 
and a camp was established here from which observations of all 
