PLANTS FROM SOUTHEASTERN UTAH. 2*JI 



ill's invitation to take this trip, full of hardships, through 

 an uninhabited and unexplored desert country. 



We left Mancos July 10, 1895, riding the first day to 

 the lower end of McElmo Canon. The alkaline clay 

 through which this creek runs is being rapidly washed 

 away. Whenever the creek is flooded by rains near its 

 source, the banks are undermined, great tracts fall in with 

 a noise like thunder, and the stream runs liquid mud into 

 the San Juan below.* 



The Cliff-dweller's ruins that are found along the rocky 

 walls of the canon have made this creek famous. The 

 tower on the McElmo has been frequently pictured and 

 is even modeled in exhibits of American archaeology. 



Settlers have taken up ranches along this creek, where 

 their possession of the land is constantly threatened by 

 the ravenous stream that has lured them to make homes 

 in this unfavorable region. The climate is milder in win- 

 ter than in the Montezuma Valley at the head of the Mc- 

 Elmo, — apples, peaches and other fruits being successfully 

 raised; but it is a most undesirable place for a home, 

 where the water is alkaline, where the sun beats down in 

 summer with an intense glare and heat, and where the 

 children of the settlers grow up knowing more of the arts 

 and luxuries of the neighboring Utes and Navajos than 

 of civilized man. 



Earlier in the season the flora of this canon is exceed- 

 ingly interesting; but at this time, little remained, besides 

 the shrubs that are common in alkaline soils. Fraxinus 



*It is only since the settlement of the country that McElmo Creek has 

 become such a greedy stream. The dams at the heads of the irrigating 

 ditches, of which there are many, cause the water to work out through the 

 soil and soften the foundations of the surface above. Before the canon 

 was settled the creek could hardly be called a good arroyo above where an 

 occasional flood would come down a branch stream from Ute Mountain. — 

 Alfred Wetherill. 



