WET-MOUNTAIN VALLEY. 123 



dispose of at Albuquerque would bring five dollars, and 

 so l)e tangible rewards for skill and care; and we were 

 about to travel where beavers were said to abound and 

 had not been trapped for many years ; while, being first-rate 

 trappers, we reasonably looked for success. 



The locality of our winter camp was a place then 

 known by the few whites who had been there, as Wet- 

 mountain Valley. And we were "laid on to it" by an 

 old mountaineer, who gave us our route, and a good de- 

 scription of the topography of the valley, besides other 

 most important information. He also satisfied us it was 

 just the place to winter in, being full of wood, water, grass 

 and game ; and that, excepting for short occasional periods 

 when visited by Ute hunting-parties, it was totally un- 

 inhabited. For a mountain valley we were told it had an 

 excellent climate, being, owing to its comparative lowness 

 and the shelter of the mountains that surrounded it, quite 

 warm in winter ; that snow rarely fell there, the storms 

 being intercepted by the mountain-peaks, and that when it 

 did, it soon disappeared, melted by the hot sun of a southern 

 latitude, and absorbed by the warm, gravelly sou ; that 

 about Christmas there might be heavy snow-storms in the 

 mountains, but it was very unusual for them to be so severe 

 as to close any of the passes. In ordinary winter seasons, 

 our informant added, the valley could be entered or left at 

 any time, and should any of the passes be closed, it would 

 only be for a very short period. And we might count to a 

 certainty on getting out in the course of a spell of fine 

 weather, that always intervened between the middle of 

 February and the storms of the equinox ; the snow that 



