THE COLOEADO. 255 



companies ; sometimes to great loss and disappointment ; at 

 others, yielding to the adventurers large quantities of gold, 

 from rich chimneys and pockets. But the difficulty, almost 

 amounting to impossibility, of keeping a working party in 

 such a country supplied with food and other necessaries ; the 

 scarcity of water near the lode ; the total absence of timber ; 

 the uncertainty and cost of labour; and, worse than all these 

 obstacles taken together, the "Indian difficulty," have caused 

 all mining operations on it to be suspended sine die. 



Looking up the Colorado, our view thereof is quite 

 limited, for but a few miles off, the heights bounding the 

 valley on each side encroach entirely on the level ground, 

 and come quite to the edge of the river, which winding 

 suddenly round a rocky point to the right, disappears 

 from sight. Raising our eyes, a succession range after 

 range, tier upon tier of lofty mountains, interlocking with 

 and backing each other, tower higher and higher toward 

 the sky ; all ragged and treeless, and having the sharp 

 serrated outlines peculiar to the mountain-ranges of almost 

 rainless climates. 



* Looking straight down, we behold beneath us a broad 

 semicircular sweep of the Colorado a huge horse-shoe of 

 burnished steel ; and in the centre of the " bottom " em- 

 braced within the curve, we see embosomed in groves of 

 acacias a beautiful little sheet of water the Beaver Pond. 

 In any other country it would be a lake. It is about the 

 size of our own Derwentwater. 



We gaze in the direction of the river's course. The 

 view is boundless. The whole country slopes gradually 

 away in a bird's-eye panorama of mountain-chains and 



