SANGBE DE CKISTO PASS. 125 



trees, pinons a pine, having large edible seeds, which are 

 stored by Indians for winter use and by clumps of small 

 oak-trees of many varieties, thousands of which trees lay 

 on the ground, pulled down or twisted and broken off by 

 bears, to enable them to feed at leisure on the acorns. 

 On the flanks of the mountains were hemlocks, spruces, 

 balsams, and pitch-pines, and their slopes were covered to 

 the snow-line with a dense forest of the Mexican pinos- 

 real. The open spaces of the valley were covered with 

 grass, which, having cured on the ground by the great heat 

 of the almost rainless summers of that locality, had become 

 a natural hay, and under the timber were patches of long 

 bunch-grass, which there remains green all the year round. 

 The main stream, resulting from the confluence of the 

 others, was about sixty yards in breadth where widest, and 

 very tortuous, being often doubled back upon itself by the 

 protruding points of rocky ridges ; and ultimately cutting 

 its way through the eastern boundary range by a deep 

 narrow pass or canon, several miles long, debouched by a 

 cleft in the rocks the " Gate of the Plains " into a large 

 open valley, that led to the " great American prairie." The 

 trail from the outside world to Fort Garland, in the San 

 Luis Valley, came up this caiion, and then, swinging to the 

 south, left Wet-mountain Valley by the Sangre de Cristo 

 Pass into the San Luis Valley a pass over, not through the 

 mountains, and practicable for mule trains, which took 

 from three to four days to make the crossing from one 

 valley to the other ; the time varying with the amount of 

 pick, shovel, and axe work necessary, and the strength of 

 the train. The old mountaineer had informed us that the 



