FIRST GYPSUM. 147 
gypsum, but cold, so spreading our blankets and picketing 
_our animals, we prepared for the night on this eyrie. 
The clear salt waters inviting us, we all descended for a 
bath, when just as we were “ sans culotte,” a succession of 
yells and shouts from the Indians, and the erackling and 
smoke from the dry grass, proclaimed a fire on top. Hastily. 
ascending, we found our bivouac in flames, but baggage safe, 
except that of the Indians, who lost considerable. 
We succeeded in beating out the fire, with blankets and 
horse cloths, and moving a little higher up, spent the most 
charming night of our trip, cool and free from insects, with 
a sky above as clear as sky could be, and countless meteors, 
coursing their way over the cgsiaies  . from the 
north-east. 
The twilight in this country is remarkable, prolonging the 
evening until a very late hour, and, when the sky is perfectly 
clear, lingering on the verge of day-break. On this night it 
was singularly so, and at no time between sunset and dawn, 
was it dark enough to obscure an object at one hundred paces 
distant. We made, this day, a march of forty miles. 
July 30th.—Daylight found us all ready for moving, and 
passing through a meadow, below the bluff, where Jacob 
shot a monster rattle-snake, with nine rattles, we met with, in 
about an hour, the first gypsum, in bulk, we had yet seen. 
The whole earth was covered with conical and rhomboidal 
chrystals of the mineral, whilst around and among it, lay 
jasper, agate and chalcedory, with some cornelian. Specimen 
