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[[underlined]]Sept.29[[/underlined]]. Started from Punta Malpais S.W. across a big treeless basin of old lava beds, full of sinks and dry lakes and a few ponds of water. This seems to have been an old lake bed 25 or 30 miles across and lowest at the Punta Malpais at 6900 feet, with Juniper & nut pine timber encircling it on slopes down to 7200 feet. Below what seems to be a pretty uniform level there is no timber, but the broken malpi is well covered & bedded in sand or gumbo except along the tops of rocky ridges that are bare & black. The whole great basin plain is gray & brown and olive green from the various desert plants & dry weeds. Bigelovia [[strikethrough]]gray [[/strikethrough]] a small gray species, guterrizia, a brown Erriogonum & a gray and dried up Krinitzkia give the general tones to the landscape. The gramma grass is getting brown & patches of wild sunflower ([[underlined]]annuus & lanerolata[[/underlined]]) are dark brown while fields of Helianthella show light gray from their dry stems. We saw no permanent water or signs of habitation.