74 MOJAVE VALLEY—BLACK MOUNTAINS. 
cafion, and one less violent twenty miles above. There are two or three troublesome shoals, 
where the river is divided by islands into several channels, but as a general rule the navigation 
has been better in this valley than elsewhere above Fort Yuma. The places that at low water 
give most trouble are the bars where the bed is covered with pebbles or gravel, but these, 
with a boat of lighter draught or at a higher stage of the river, would present no difficulty. 
The range east of the Mojave valley we call the Black mountains. These mountains run 
from a point fifteen or twenty miles east of the foot of the valley in a northwesterly direction, 
and cross the Colorado about fifty miles north of camp. Where the river breaks through this 
Fig. 18.—Beale’s Pass. 
chain there is icaintiaas a stupendous cafion. Beyond the cafion is the supposed position of 
the mouth of the Virgen and the Great. Bend of the Colorado, Westward, opposite to camp, 
is the pass through the spur that connects the Black and Mojave ranges, by which the wagon 
trail of Lieutenant Beale leaves the valley of the Colorado. 
_ The winter has given place to spring. The nights are cool, but ice is no longer found. The 
days are very warm, but even the rays of the sun have seemed to be more tempered and less 
oppressive since entering the Mojave valley. 
