INCIDENTAL REMARKS. 177 



are also found adjacent to the Medicine Bow Mountains, whose waters 

 are strongly impregnated with mineral salts. 



In numerous places the surface, for small distances, is entirely naked 

 and whitened with saline efflorescences, that vie in their appearance with 

 the unspotted purity of fresh-fallen snow. 



The Laramie river * traces its way through the whole extent, — rising in 

 the southern extremity of the Medicine Bow Mountains and in the desolate 

 highlands that form the dividing ridge between its own and the waters of 

 Cache a la Poudre, and, after flowing a distance of some three hundred 

 miles, discharges itself into the Platte. 



Upon this river and its branches are many beautiful bottoms of rich al- 

 luvial soil, well adapted to cultivation, varying from five to ten miles in 

 length, and from two to five in breadth. These bottoms are to some ex- 

 tent well supplied with timber, consisting of ash, elm, cottonwood, box- 

 elder, and willow, while the adjacent mountains and hills afford pine, cedar, 

 and balsam. 



Of the various kinds of wild fruits and berries are found cherries, plums, 

 currants, gooseberries, service-berries, buffalo-berries, and some few 

 grapes ; among its vegetables and roots are the bread-root, pomme blanc, 

 onions, and commote. 



Its prevailing rock is sandstone, (gray micaceous, brown argillaceous, 

 red granitic, and ferruginous,) limestone, (siliceous, testaceous, fossilifer- 

 ous, and terrene,) and red granite, with various conglomerates and heavy 

 boulders of fragmentary and transition rock. 



Among the mineral productions incident to this region are salt, sulphur, 

 soda, magnesia, nitre, alum, coal, iron, copper, and gold, (the latter only in 

 small quantities.) Among its game is embraced nearly every variety 

 found in countries adjacent to the mountains. 



The high prairies skirting the tributaries of the Laramie, though favored 

 with many valleys of fertile soil, are fit only for grazing purposes, on ac- 

 count of their general aridity and scarcity of water ; a fault, by the ^vay, 

 too common with a large proportion of that vast extent of territory irom 

 the neighborhood of our western frontiers almost to the very shores of the 

 Pacific. 



* This river received its present name from one Joseph Laramie, a French irap 

 per, who was killed near its mouth, several years since, by the Indians. 



