THE DEAD SEA of CALIFORNIA.

Tuapeka Times, Volume II, Issue 103, 29 January 1870, Page 7

THE DEAD SEA of CALIFORNIA.

Mark Twain, writing in the Buffalo " Express," thus describes this singular lake : — Mono Lake, or the Dead Sea of California, is one of her. most extraordinary curiosities, but being situated in a very out-of-the-way corner of the country, and away up among the eternal snows of the Sierras, it is little known and very seldom visited. A mining excitement carried me there once, and I spent several months in its vicinity. It lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, 8000 feet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains 2000 feet higher^ whose summits are hidden always in the clouds. This solemn, silent, saille?s sea — this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on carth — is little graced with the picturesque. It is an unpretending expanse of greyish water, about a hundred miles in circumference, with two islands in its centre, mere upheavals of rent, and scorched and blistered lava, snowed over with grey banks and drifts of pumice stone and ashes, the winding sheet of the dead volcano, whose vast crater the lake has seized upon and occupied. The lake is 200 feet deep, and its sluggish waters are so strong with alkali, tjat if you only dip the most hopelessly soiled garments into them once or twice, and wring it out, it will be found as clean as if it had been through your ablest washerwoman's hands. While we camped there our laundry work was easy. We tied the week's washing astern of our boat, and sailed for a quarter of a mile, and the job was complete, all to the wringing out. If we threw the water on our heads and gave them a rub or so, the white .lather would pile up three inches high. The wcter is not good for bruised places and abrasions of the skin. A white man cannot drink it, for it is nearly pure lye. It is said that the Indians in the vicinity drink it sometimes, though. There are no fish in Mono Lake — no Irogs, no snakes, no pollywogs — nothing, in fact, that goes to make life desirable. Millions of wild ducks and sea gulls swim about the surface, but no living thing exists under the surface except a white feathery sort of a worm, one-half an inch long, which looks like a bit of white thread frayed out at the sides. If you dip up a gallon of water you will get about fifteen thousand of these. They give the water a sort of grayish- white appearance. Then there is a fly which looks something like our house fly. These settle on the beach to eat the worms tha£ „wash ashore — and any time you can see there a belt of flies an inch deep and six feet wide, and this belt extends clear around the lake — a belt of flies a hundred miles j long. ' . ' , Mono Lake is 150 miles in a straight line from the- ocean — and between it and the ocean are one or two ranges of mountains — yet thousands of seagulls go there every season to lay their eggs and rear their young. And in this connection let us observe ano-

ther instance of Nature's wisdom. The islands in the lake being merely huge masses of lava, coated over with ashes and pumice stone, and utterly innocent of vegetation or anytMng that would burn ; and sea-gulls' eggs being entirely useless to anybody unless they be cooked, Nature has provided an unfailing spring of boiling water on the largest island, and you can put your eggs in there, and in four minutes you can boil them as hard as any statement I have made during the past fifteen years. Within ten feet of the boiling spring is a spring of pure cold water, sweet and wholesome. Half a dozen little mountain brooks flow into Mono Lake, but not a stream of any kind flows out of it. It neither rises nor falls apparently, and whatever it does with its surplus water is a da^k and bloody mystery. All the rivers of Nevada sink into the earth mysteriously after they have run a hundred miles or so — none of them flow to the sea, as is the fashion of rivers in all other lands. There are only two seasons in the region round about Mono Lake, and these are the breaking up of one winter and the beginning of the next. More than once I have seen a perfectly blistering morning* open up with the thermometer at ninety degrees at eight o'clock, and seen the snow fall fourteen inches deep, and that same identical thermometer go down to fortyfour degrees under shelter, before nine o'clock at night. Under favourable circumstances it snows at least once in every single month in the year, in the little town of Mono. So uncertain is the climate in summer that a lady who goes out visiting cannot hope to be prepared for all emergencies unless she takes her ian underone arm and her snow-shoes under the other.