Came on to the top of a high basaltic mountain, that seemed to offer an almost perpendicular descent into a deep gorge or _cañon_. I rode right and left, but discovering no better place, down we went; how the mules managed to scramble to the bottom without falling head over heels I know not, but we got safely down. I believe it would have been utterly impossible to have got up over it a second time. Through the gorge ran a large swift stream, called by the Indians Wychus creek, in which we found a good fording-place and got over it; safely camped about a mile below the place we forded. The camp was completely shut in by almost vertical cliffs of basalt and tuffa, covered thickly with what I take to be ancient river-drift; the cliffs were, I should say, quite 100 feet high. The great black _butte_ down which we scrambled was a volcano, and an active one too, not a very long time ago; streams of lava, just like slag, that had run in a molten state as if from out a huge glass furnace, reached from its summit to its base; and the red cindery earth, on either side this congealed stream, told plainly enough how fearfully hot it must have been. One would imagine this district was entirely volcanic, the great desert-waste we crossed being composed of pumice, scoria, and ashes. Perhaps these lesser hills were safety-valves to the more conspicuous mountains in the coast-range of British Columbia and Washington Territory—Mounts Baker, Rainier, St. Helens, and others. Several pillars, composed of a kind of conglomerate, quite away from all the surrounding rocks, stand as if man had hewn or rather built them—ghostly obelisks, that have a strange and unusual look. I suppose the portions that once joined them to the mass, from which they were detached, must have been crumbled off by Time’s fingers, and these solitary pedestals left as records. Round them, too, were scores of tiny heaps of boulders, built, as I am informed, by the Snake Indians, who suppose these pillars are the remains of spirits that have been turned into stone; but for what object they really pile up these little altars I could never discover, though the Indians tell you as a powerful ‘_medicine_’; but who can say what that means? _May 29th._—All night it rained in torrents, and I do not think I ever saw so dark a night; the rain put out all our fires, and I could neither see men or mules, although close to them. Got the mules together at 7 A.M., but did not make an early start, in consequence of the men being tired from want of sleep: we managed to start at eight o’clock. Our first task was to get out of the gorge. It was a most tedious and even dangerous job, for the ground was loose, and constantly broke away from under the mules’ feet, but at last we managed to scramble to the top.