JOHN C. FREMONJC. 245 



the Upper Arkansas, of which about two hundred 

 miles, as you approach the mountains, is continu- 

 ously well adapted to settlements as well as to roads. 

 Numerous well-watered and fertile valleys, broad and 

 level, open up among the mountains, which present 

 themselves in detatched blocks, outliers, gradually 

 closing in around the heads of the streams, but 

 leaving open approaches to the central ridges. The 

 whole of the intermountain region is abundant in 

 grasses, wood, coal, and fertile soil. The Pueblos 

 above Bent's Fort prove it to be well adapted to the 

 grains and vegetables common to the latitude, in- 

 cluding Indian corn, which ripens well, and to the 

 support of healthy stock, which increase well and 

 take care of themselves summer and winter. 



" The climate is mild and the winters short, the 

 autumn usually having its full length of bright, open 

 weather, without snow, which in winter falls rarely 

 and passes off quickly. In this belt of country lying 

 along the mountains the snow falls more early and 

 much more thinly than in the open plains to tho 

 eastward : the storms congregate about the high 

 mountains and leave the valleys free. In the begin- 

 ning of December we found yet no snow on the 

 Huerfano River, and were informed by an old resi- 

 dent, then engaged in establishing a farm at the 



mouth of this stream, that snow seldom or never 



21* 



