Mono Lake is a hundred miles in a straight line from the ocean--and
between it and the ocean are one or two ranges of mountains--yet
thousands of sea-gulls go there every season to lay their eggs and rear
their young. One would as soon expect to find sea-gulls in Kansas.
And in this connection let us observe another instance of Nature's
wisdom. The islands in the lake being merely huge masses of lava, coated
over with ashes and pumice-stone, and utterly innocent of vegetation or
anything that would burn; and sea-gull's eggs being entirely useless to
anybody unless they be cooked, Nature has provided an unfailing spring of
boiling water on the largest island, and you can put your eggs in there,
and in four minutes you can boil them as hard as any statement I have
made during the past fifteen years. Within ten feet of the boiling
spring is a spring of pure cold water, sweet and wholesome.
So, in that island you get your board and washing free of charge--and if
nature had gone further and furnished a nice American hotel clerk who was
crusty and disobliging, and didn't know anything about the time tables,
or the railroad routes--or--anything--and was proud of it--I would not
wish for a more desirable boarding-house.
Half a dozen little mountain brooks flow into Mono Lake, but not a stream
of any kind flows out of it. It neither rises nor falls, apparently, and
what it does with its surplus water is a dark and bloody mystery.
There are only two seasons in the region round about Mono Lake--and these
are, the breaking up of one Winter and the beginning of the next.
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