124 ON THE FRONTIER. 



would then be in the passes having settled down and got 

 hard enough to travel over. 



We found Wet-mountain Valley to be a district covering 

 a space of forty miles by twenty, enclosed by interlocking 

 peaks, belonging to the Rocky Mountain system, some of 

 which were the highest of that range, and to be a congeries 

 of mountain glades, glens, and small valleys, opening into 

 each other, and of dividing ridges, some sharp and rugged, 

 others having small table-lands on their tops ; in fact, a 

 basin of intermingled miniature mountains and plains. 

 Down most of the valleys coursed streams, which headed in 

 the inaccessible surrounding summits, and were fed in 

 summer by the melting of the snow which lay upon them. 

 The upper portions of these streams were bordered by 

 osiers and willows, and occasional groves of ghostly-look- 

 ing, quaking aspens ; replaced, lower down, wherever the 

 ground was level, by large bodies of cot ton wood- trees, of 

 unusual size, whose trunks, being free from branches for 

 some twenty feet from the ground, permitted the growth of 

 a dense underbrush, which in many places was so matted to- 

 gether with grape and other vines as to be quite impassable 

 for man. These bodies of timber ranged in size from a few 

 acres to several hundred ; and in them were places where 

 mountain whirlwinds, in passing through, had thrown every 

 stick of timber down into a chaos of confusion, over which 

 vines, brambles, and creepers of many kinds had grown, 

 making jungles which were the safe retreats and contained 

 the lairs of bears, pumas, and that largest and fiercest 

 of the wolf species the gray mountain-wolf. The low 

 dividing ridges were covered with dwarf cedars, juniper 



