We reached the Sink at 6½ P. M. on Thursday, the 29th—scarcely two days from Gravelly Ford, where we struck the river, having in those two days traversed some two hundred and twenty miles of very bad and intensely hot, dusty road. At eight, we were ready to pass “the Desert”—that is, the desolate plain which separates the Sink of the Humboldt from that of the Carson. But one of our fresh mules was sick and could not be replaced, which made our first drive a tedious one, and we contrived, by dexterous mismanagement, to get stuck in a bayou or back-set of the Humboldt Sink, where we for a while seemed likely to spend the night. Our lead-mules, having been mired and thrown down, would not pull; the sick wheeler could not. At length, by putting one of the leaders in his place, we made a start, and come through, finding the bottom firm and the water not deep, a yard either way from the place of our misadventure. By a little past midnight, we were at the half-way station, where a well of decent brackish water has been dug, and which a drove of four or five hundred mules reached about the time we did. They stopped here to rest, however, while we pushed on with a fresh team—for ten miles of the way, over as heavy a drag of sand as I ever endured, whereas most of this desert is a hard, alkaline clay. By five A. M., after riding four days and the intervening nights without rest, we drew up at the station near the sink of the Carson. XXVI. CARSON VALLEY—THE SIERRA NEVADA. PLACERVILLE, Cal., _Aug. 1, 1859_. Though the Carson sinks in or is absorbed by the same desert with the Humboldt, a glance at its worst estate suffices to convince the traveler, that the former waters by far the more hopeful region. Large cotton-woods dot its banks very near its sink; and its valley, wherever moist, is easily rendered productive. You feel that you are once more in a land where the arm of industry need not be paralyzed by sterility, obstruction, and despair.