The chain of craters has been the subject of several writers and naturalists. Mark Twain visited Mono Basin in the 1860s and wrote about Mono Lake, but did not mention any of the Mono-Inyo Craters except for the lake's two volcanic islands. He wrote in Roughing It (1872) that the lake was in a lifeless, hideous desert ... that was the loneliest spot on earth ... little graced with the picturesque.