204 NIGHT VOYAGE. 



rising fast ; while lowering clouds spread tlieir black and gloomy 

 pall over the dark, tumultuous waters. With our heavy flat-bot- 

 tomed boat, rowing against a head wind and a very considerable 

 sea was hard work, especially after a day already spent in severe 

 toil ; but we had either to continue on, or to anchor, as there was 

 no shore that we could approach in the dark, on account of the 

 shallowness of the water. We accordingly followed around the 

 edge of the bar, being forced thus to make a circuit of some ten 

 miles, when we finally succeeded in getting to the northward of 

 the shoal, and turned our faces in the proper direction. By this 

 time it was ten o'clock at night, and we had been constantly en- 

 gaged since daylight. The wind now blowing favourably from the 

 north-west, we again set our sails, the crew was sent to rest in the 

 bottom of the boat, and I continued at the helm during the night. 



The western and northern part of this extensive flat (for it is all 

 just above the level of the water) forms, as well as I could judge 

 in the darkness, a hard tufaceous reef, against which a north-west 

 wind dashed the heavy water with great violence. Indeed, for a 

 part of the night, I was guided in my course by the roar of the 

 breakers beating against the reef, reminding me forcibly of similar 

 adventures upon the iron-bound coast of New England, or of the 

 heave of the surf upon the coral-reefs of Florida. 



Nothing occurred during the night, except grounding upon the 

 tail of a sand-spit making out to the southward from a little island 

 a few miles north of Carrington's, to which the boys had given the 

 name of «' Hat Island." This might easily have been avoided had 

 not the night been so very dark and the lofty range of the Wah- 

 satch Mountains ahead enveloped us in a mantle of such profound 

 blackness that it seemed at every heave of the sea as if we were 

 plunging into the very mouth of Avernus. After shoving the boat 

 over the bar with handspikes, we struck immediately into deep 

 water, and as I now knew every inch of the way, the people again 

 retired to their blankets, being very weary. The night soon began 

 to clear away and the stars to appear, their beams reflected bril- 

 liantly in the dense water of the lake. Flashes of vivid lightning 

 blazed up occasionally from behind the mountains, and several me- 

 teors, some of great size and dazzling brilliancy, shot down the sky 

 to the north-east. This was the third entire night I had thus spent 

 upon the lake, sitting quietly at the helm, guiding my little bark 

 over its solitary waste. Again was I struck with the deep and pro- 



