CORRESPONDENCE. 137 



and I believe they did very well until they were eaten up by the cattle. 



Judging from the altitudes by Hayden and his geological survey, our 

 best farming lands have an altitude of from 6,300 to 6,500 feet above the 

 sea. 



The sage land is the best, and is a deep, sandy loam, and very rich, 

 and where the sage gets a sufficiency of water it grows to a great size, and 

 often reaches the higlit of six or seven feet. The grease-wood lands are 

 adobe, and are not considered good farming lands. 



There are but few kinds of native fruit growing in this vicinity 

 the choke-cherry, sarvis berry, mountain raspberry and currant. L 

 have seen cherries that grew at an altitude of 7,000 feet that were both 

 large and well flavored. 



The mercury was not lower than twenty below zero last winter, and 

 not very long spells of cold weather at any one time, and not higher than 

 one hundred during the hottest day of summer. 



I can give you a better idea of what will succeed by giving you. a few 

 facts of my own personal experience in my vegetable garden. Sweet 

 corn matured so as to make good seed ; also beans. I planted out a few 

 tomato plants the first of July that ripened a few tomatoes. My water- 

 melons did not succeed for lack of irrigation during the Indian troubles, 

 when we had to leave our homes and seek safety in forting up our place. 

 Our place is only a half-mile north of the trail taken by the Indians at 

 the time the Meeker women were taken into captivity. 



The hills that have timber on are very poor and rocky, producing 

 but low, scrubby cedar, that seldom if ever gets long enough for two fence 

 posts. The canons in the mountains, and sometimes nearly to the tops of 

 the mountains, are covered with scrub oak and quaking asp, some box 

 elder and pinon pine. 



The general lay of the country is very hilly and uneven and cut up 

 with gullies and wash-outs, so that travel on horseback is sometimes 

 difficult. The gullies and wash-outs would indicate heavy rains, and yet 

 I have not seen anyone that has seen a hard rain since the country has 

 been settled. Several persons here, at Axial, and at Yampa, have been 

 getting fruit trees 



I should be much pleased to see a more general desire to improve 

 the country by setting and growing fruits of such kinds as would succeed, 

 and I think many kinds would do well here. Only eighty miles to the 

 West of us, down at Ashley, I am told they raise considerable fruit. 



