1889] Silver Lake of Oregon. 981 
One day we made an exploration of the desert in the direction 
of Wagontire Mountain towards the north-east. After travers- 
ing the sagebrush for two hours we reached the sandy desert of 
which we had heard. An apparently endless expose of sand- 
dunes extended to the west, the north and the east. These 
dunes were not conical, but had a sloping side to the south-west, 
and a perpendicular face to the north-east. As the wind blew 
strongly from the south-west, the sand slowly crept towards the 
summit, and then fell in a fine shower to the base below. In this 
way the dunes constantly shift their position north-eastward till 
they reach the slopes of a range of hills, where they are banked 
up so as to be visible at a long distance. The sand I found to 
be soft and difficult for man and beast. At intervals there are 
shallow ravines lined wath bunches of course grasses. Several 
species of finches inhabit these places, and feed on the seeds. 
Among these I occasionally saw the desert Pipilo, P. chlorurus. 
At one of them I found a set of Indian domestic implements ; a 
flat dish and several pestless carved so as to have a portion for 
the hand separated from the head by a shoulder. All were made 
of the vesicular basalt, and some of them were colored red, like 
that found on the slopes of Winter Mountain. As no camp could 
well have continued there, it appeared that these implements 
had been left or thrown away. This sandy desert is said to be 
about twenty-five miles from east to west, and half as wide from 
north to south. 
We left the sand and kept the sage-brush until about twenty- 
four miles east of our camp. Here I climbed a cliff to view the 
country. It was composed of the same thinly stratified volcanic 
mud-conglomerate as the hills that bound Silver Lake on the 
north. Lizards of the genera Uta and Sceloporus abounded. The 
scene was impressive from its wild desolation. As far as the eye 
could reach was the same sage-brush desert, the same waterless 
region of death. Many a man has entered this region never to 
escape from its fatal drought, especially during the first days of 
the overland emigration to Oregon. The Wagontire mountain, 
whose long and gloomy mass made the northeastern horizon, 
owes its name to the disastrous fate of one of those trains of 
