the greatest regret that I turn
my face from it homewards. How can I sum up its wonderful attractions!
It is dotted with islands of great beauty, as yet unvisited by man, but
which at no remote period will be adorned with villas and the ornaments
of civilized life. The winds from the mountain gorges roll its placid
waters into a furious sea, and crest its billows with foam. Forests of
pine, deep, dark and almost impenetrable, are scattered at random along
its banks, and its beautiful margin presents every variety of sand and
pebbly beach, glittering with crystals, carnelians and chalcedony. The
Indians approach it under the fear of a superstition originating in the
volcanic forces surrounding it, which amounts almost to entire
exclusion. It possesses adaptabilities for the highest display of
artificial culture, amid the greatest wonders of Nature that the world
affords, and is beautified by the grandeur of the most extensive
mountain scenery, and not many years can elapse before the march of
civil improvement will reclaim this delightful solitude, and garnish it
with all the attractions of cultivated taste and refinement.

Strange and interesting as are the various objects which we have met
with in this vast field of natural wonders, no camp or place of rest on
our journey has afforded our party greater satisfaction than the one we
are now occupying, which is our first camp since emerging from the dense
forest. Filled with gloom at the loss of our comrade, tired, tattered,
browned by exposure and reduced in flesh by our labors, we resemble more
a party of organized mendicants than of men in pursuit of Nature's
greatest novelties. But from this point we hope that our journey will be
comparatively free from difficulties of travel.

Mr. Hauser's experience as a civil engineer has been an invaluable aid
in judging of the "lay of the land," and so in giving direction to our
party in its zig-zag journeying around the lake. In speaking of this,
Hauser says that he thinks that I have a more correct idea of mountain
heights, distances and directions, and can follow a direct course
through dense timber more unerringly than any man he knows, except James
Stuart--a compliment which I accept most graciously. Some of our party
declare that they would have had no expectation of finding their way
back to camp, if they had ventured into the forest in search of Mr.
Everts.

I recited to Washburn and Hauser to-night an extract from "Th