ces the water looked pink.
Seals innumerable watched me from just outside the breakers. As the
waves lifted to a semi-transparence, I could make out others playing,
darting back and forth, up and down like disturbed tadpoles, clinging
to the wave until the very instant of its fall, then disappearing as
though blotted out. The salt smell of seaweed was in my nostrils: I
found the place pleasant--

With these few and scattered impressions we returned to the ship. It
had been warped to a secure anchorage, and snugged down. Dr.
Schermerhorn and Darrow were on deck waiting to go ashore.

I made my report. The two passengers disappeared. They carried lunch
and would not be back until night-fall. We had orders to pitch a large
tent at a suitable spot and to lighten ship of the doctor's personal
and scientific effects. By the time this was accomplished, the two
had returned.

"It's all right," Darrow volunteered to Captain Selover, as he came
over the side. "We've found what we want."

Their clothes were picked by brush and their boots muddy. Next morning
Captain Selover detailed me to especial work.

"You'll take two of the men and go ashore under Darrow's orders," said
he.

Darrow told us to take clothes for a week, an axe apiece, and a block
and tackle. We made up our ditty bags, stepped into one of the surf
boats, and were rowed ashore. There Darrow at once took the lead.

Our way proceeded across the grass flat, through the opening of the
narrow canon, and so on back into the interior by way of the bed
through which flowed the sulphur stream. The country was badly eroded.
Most of the time we marched between perpendicular clay banks about
forty feet high. These were occasionally broken by smaller tributary
arroyos of the same sort. It would have been impossible to reach the
level of the upper country. The bed of the main arroyo was flat, and
grown with grasses and herbage of an extraordinary vividness, due,
I supposed, to the sulphur water. The stream itself meandered aimlessly
through the broader bed. It steadily grew warmer and the sulphur smell
more noticeable. Above us we could see the sky and the sharp clay edge
of the arroyo. I noticed the tracks of Darrow and Dr. Schermerhorn
made the day before.

After a mile of this, the bottom ran up nearly to the level of the
sides, and we stepped out on the floor of a little valley almost
surrounded by more hills.

It was an extraordinary place, and since much happen