Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1869-11-04
Mark Twain on the Salt Lake Of Cali
fOrnia.

Mono LAKE, or the Dead Sea of Cali
fornia, is one of her most extraordinary
curiosities, b + being situated in very
out-ofthe-way corner of the country, and
away up among the eternal SHOWS OF the
Sierras, is little known and very seldom
visited. A mining excitement carried me
there once, and spent several months in
its vicinity 1t lies in a liteless, treeless,
hideous desert, 5000 feet above the level of
the sea, and is guarded by mountains 2,C0O
feet higher, whose submits are hidden al
ways in the clouds This solemn, silent,
sailless sea-this lonely tenant OF the lone
Hest spot on earth--is little graced with
the picturesque. 1t is an unpretending
eypanse of greyish water, about 100 miles
in circumference, with two islands in its
center, nero upheavals of rent, and
scorched and blistered lava showed over
with grey banks and drifts of pumice and
ashes, the winding sheet of the dead vol
cano, whose vast crater the lake has seized
upon and occupied.
The lake is 200 feet deep, and its slug
gish waters are so strong with alkali that
if you only dip the most hopelessly soiled
garment into them once or twice and
| wiring it out it will be found as clean as if
it had been through your ablest washer
/ woman's hands. While we camped there
our laundry work was easy. We tied the
weeks washing astern of our boat and
sailed a quarter of mile, and the job was
complete, all to the wringng out, If we
, threw the water on our heads and gave
7 them a rub or so, the white lather would
pile up three inches high. This water is
not good for bruised places and abrasions
( of the skin We had a valuable dog. He
had raw places on him. He had more raw
/ places on him than sound ones. He was
4 the rawest dog almost ever knew. He
1 jumped overheard one day to getaway from
/ the flies. But it was bad judgment In his
condition it would have been just as com
/ Portable to Jump into the fire. The alkali
water nipped him in all the raw places
simultaneously, and he struck out for the
shore with considerable interest. He
yelped, and barked, anG howled as he
went-and by the time he got to the shore
there was no bark to him-for he had
barked the bark all out of his
insides, and the alkali had cleaned
the bark all off his outside, and
I he probably wished he had never en-
/ barked in any such enterprise. He ran
round and round in circle, and paved
the earth and clawed the air, and threw
double summersets, sometimes backward
and sometimes forward, in the most fran
tic and extraordinary manner. He was
not a demonstrative dog, as general thing,
but rather of grave and serious turn of
mind, and never saw him take so much
interest in anything before. He finally
struck out over the mountains, at gait
which we estimated at about $50 miles an
hour, and he is going yet. This was about
five years ago. We look for what is left of
him along here every day.
A white man cannot drink the water Of
| Mono Lake. for it is nearly pure I've. 1t
is said that the Indians in the vicinity
drink it sometimes though. 1t is not i'm.
! probable, tor they are among the purest
liars ever saw. There will be no addi-
tional charge for this joke, except to par
| ties requiring an explanation of it. This
joke has received high commentator
| from some of the ablest minds of the age
Horace Greeley remarked to friend of
mine that if he were ever to make a Joke
! like that, he would not desire to live any
| longer
4 There are no fish in Mono Lake-no
frogs, no snakes, no pollywogs-nothing,
/ in fact, that goes to make life desirable.
Millions Of wild ducks and seagulls swim
about the surface but no living thing ex-
/ lists under the surface, except white
1 feathery sort Of worm, one half of an inch
| long, which looks like a bit of white
| thread frayed out at the sides. If you dip
up gallon of water, you will get about
/ $4,000 OF these They give to the water
sort of ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thee
there is fly, which looks something like
our house fly. These settle on the beach
to eat the worms that wash ashore-and
any time you see there belt of flies an
! inch deep and six feet wide, and this belt
extends clear around the ake--a belt of
flies 100 miles long If you throw stone
among them, they swarm up so thick that
they look dense, like a cloud You can
hold them under water as long as YOU
please-they don't mind it--they are only
proud of it, When you let them 60 they
pop up to the surface as dry as a patent
office report, and walk ofi'as unconcerned.
ly as if they had been educated especially
with view to afording instructive enter.
tanment to man in that particular way.
Providence leaves nothing to 90 by chance.
All things have their uses and their part
and proper place in Natures economy
The ducks and gullS eat the tlies-the flies
eat the worms-the Indians eat the flies
the wild cats eat the Indians-the white
folks eat the wild cats when their crops
fail-and thus all things are lovely.
Mono Lake is $50 miles in straight
line from the ocean-and between it and
the ocean are one or two ranges of noun:
tains-yet thousands of sea-gusls go there
every season to lay their eggs and rear
their vol ng. One would as soon expect
to find sea.gullS in Tennessee. And in
this connectio" let us observe another in
stance of NATURES wisdom. The islands
in the lake being merely huge masses of
lava, coated over with ashes and pumice-
stone, and utterly innocent of vegetation
mr. a pvthinr TINT yuOuJ I,,r,, 81 nyl aa,s