I think we were both a
little nervous that night; I confess that I was, and if an unwashed
black-bearded individual had poked his head out from the willows and
said, "Woof!" or whatever it is that they say when they want to start
up a jack-rabbit, we would both have stampeded clear across the
border. In fact I felt a little as I did when I played truant from
school and wondered what would happen when I was found out.
Daybreak found us ready to resume our journey, and with a rising sun
any nervousness vanished. What could any one want with two men who had
nothing but a flat-bottomed boat?
All the morning we travelled west, the trees ever drawing closer as
our water departed on the south, running through the willows,
arrow-weed, and cat-tails. Then the channel opened into Volcanic Lake,
a circular body of water, which is not a lake but simply a gathering
together of the streams we had been losing, and here the water stands,
depositing its mud. All the way across had no depth but a bottomless
mud, so soft it would engulf a person if he tried to wade across.
On the west there was no growth. The shore was nothing but an ash-like
powder, not a sand, but a rich soil blown here and there, building in
dunes against every obstruction, ever moving before the wind. Here
were boiling, sputtering mud pots and steam vents building up and
exhausting through mud pipe-stems, rising a foot or two above the
springs. Here was a shelter or two of sun-warped boards constructed by
those who come here crippled with rheumatism and are supposed to
depart, cured.
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