1772 REPORT OF THE CHIEF OF ENGINEERS. 



The precipitation, it was stated, during the rainy season, which had gone by, was 

 here very slight. As an experiment some of the com had not been irrigated ; it was 

 but 2 to 3 feet high, while the other, which had been watered, was more than twice as 

 tall. The chief cause for complaint was the immense number of aphides or plant-lice, 

 with which the cabbage was particularly afflicted. 



Of possible import as to the value of a farm in this region, it maybe mentioned that 

 while the price of everything was lower than earlier or much later, butter was 25 cents 

 per pound; cabbages, 25 cents per head; onions (very large), 50 cents per dozen, &c. ; 

 the price at Animas City, during the winter previous, being per pound, onions 12£' 

 cents, beets 10, cabbage 6, and potatoes 2^. As must be always done, the crops were 

 produced by irrigation. The ditch leading from the river is f mile long, and cost him, 

 not including his own time and labor, $60 ; a most economical and safe investment. 



on 



of Pinos near by, the total width is between 4 and 5 miles. The river at this point 

 is diverted to the southwest by a great mesa for 3 or 4 miles, after which it flows again 

 in a southerly direction. This mesa formation is a group of rugged hills, from 300 to 

 500 feet in height, pinon-clad, with dwarfed spruce, which upon the opposite side of 

 the river reappears in small mesas or hillocks of equal height, crowned with large 

 rocks; the superposed Cretaceous sandstone denuded and bare attests the great erosion 

 that formed the valley below. All of this portion is looked upon with envious eyes by 

 the emigrant passing on to the west, and as soon as the country is opened to settlement 

 by the removal of the Utes, their inevitable fate and merely a question of time, the 

 settlers will flock thereto and it will be immediately occupied. 



About 8 miles below, the middle road crosses the river going northwest to the 

 Florida ; above this point the sketch given in Plate 2 was taken to represent the gen- 

 eral appearance and contour lines of the mountain ranges to the north and northwest, 

 abruptly terminating at a point near the western horizon. 



Near here and above were observed quantities of stock, belonging above the reserva- 

 tion line. The ranchmen allow them to range at will ; dumb brutes are no respecters 

 of air-lines, and quietly proceed to range over and eat upon forbidden ground, to the 

 indignation of the possessors thereof. 



The land has here the almost semi-tropical look of the soil of central and lower New 

 Mexico, arid and parched earth — magnificent material for home-made bricks or 

 " adobes." The vegetation is chiefly of dry and crooked sage from 3 to 4 feet high, and 

 the prickly-pear cactus, covering the earth away from the stream. The immediate 

 bottom of 150 yards or more upon either side possesses high grasses and is thickly tim- 

 bered with cottonwood and undergrowth. Thence upon either side extends a bench, 

 1 and 2 miles in width, receding and rising from the river, sj)arsely grassed, into which, 

 from the higher elevations, come low, wide hollows or subvalleys, of the nature of gen- 

 tle arroyos. 



Everywhere the pebbly covered ground shows the lines of drainage and former flows 

 of water, before erosion of this lower bed had been completed. About 5 miles below 

 the crossing of the middle road the width of the land of "bench" character is from 4 

 to 5 miles, all of which is susceptible of irrigation. The river for the last 8 miles has 

 a considerable fall, though not sufficient to be denoted as rapid. 



Some 12 miles below the road-crossing, rise up lofty mesas in close succession, over 

 1,000 feet in height, closing in upon the river. Its whole strength is now confined to 

 cutting its way to the San Juan below in a narrow gorge, through the high interposed 

 plateau of Cretaceous rock. The agricultural value of the river is changed ; its canon 

 bottom is narrow, confined, wholly unproductive and inhospitable ; the entire region 

 is of black forbidding apx>earance, and a scene of utter desolation as are the true mesa 

 formations of New Mexico. The outline sketches accompanying and given on Plates 2, 

 3, and 4, showing a view of the Needle Mountains or Quartzite Crags and La Plata 

 Mountains to the north and northwest and the outlook to the south of the great plateau, 

 will aid in forming a conception of the contrasts in this region of the San Juan, a por- 

 tion of a great basin which must prove in future one of the most valuable fields for ag- 

 riculture. 



From the Rio de los Pinos to the Rio Florida, 13^ miles, the road passes over a sec- 

 tion of as little interest in an agricultural point of view as it is devoid of novel and 

 startling features of landscape. Following a natural route between low hills, higher 

 on the Florida water-shed than on the Los Pinos sloj>es, the road winds considerably 

 through a line of grassy meadows from 400 yards in width at the point of departing 

 from the Los Pinos bottom to 250 and less as Ave ascend, becoming more narrow upon 

 the Florida water-shed. The timber of the region is cedar, in some cases of large size, 

 with scrub-oak, a predominant feature in hillside vegetation. 



Three ranches are all that were passed en route, the first nearly a mile from the river, 

 the next 1^ miles beyond, both locations of hay-cutting chiefly. The last and finest, 

 where we noted quite a " fine " shingle-roof, glass-windows, and out-buildings, a novelty 

 among the localranches, is \\ miles from the Florida, east of the divide, occupying a grassy 



