NARRATIVE. 11 



Durango is a thriving town located in the valley of the 

 Las Animas river at an elevation of 6,500 feet. South of the 

 town the hills rise 1,000 or 1,500 feet higher. They are 

 mostly composed of beds of shale with a few coal-bearing 

 strata and so give but few plants of interest during the hot 

 midsummer months, even along the narrow ravines and 

 arroyas. The Grindelias, Mentzelias and Eriogonums 

 found within the city limits proved fully as interesting as 

 the plants of these nearby hills. In some places they sup- 

 port a considerable growth of Juniperus monosperma with 

 scattered trees of pinon. Near the eastern edge of the 

 town one small hill was noticed that had been covered by a 

 rather dense growth of this juniper, but now only a few of 

 the trees were living, the others having apparently been 

 killed by Gymnosporangium speciosum Peck, which had left 

 the swollen and distorted trunks marked with its peculiar 

 plicate tumors. 



North of town toward Trimble Springs the Animas valley 

 is somewhat broader, though bounded on each side by pre- 

 cipitous mountain walls which rise from 2,000 to 2,500 feet 

 above the stream. Every acre of irrigable land is in a high 

 state of cultivation, hay or green fields and orchards filling 

 all the valley from Durango to where the Hermosa River 

 joins the Animas. Here we noted similar willows to those 

 found at Mancos and at the base of the cliffs were box elders 

 and Ribes cereum. 



Through the kindness of Col. Thomas Hamor, of Durango, 

 we were enabled to make a somewhat hasty trip to Colum- 

 bine, twenty-five miles north of Durango, on the old Silverton 

 trail, and only a few miles to the eastward of our Upper 

 La Plata camp. The place is near the head of the valley, 

 and Hamor's Lake, a picturesquely beautiful sheet of water, 

 is one of the sources of the Las Animas river. The lake 



