358 Parks of Colorado. 
tossed and scattered high in the upper regions, but are not cal- 
cined by flame. _The metallic ores are as various as is the variety 
. 
envelope of the park, is not dissimilar to the Cordillera in its 
teristics in miniature of the Cordillera, but is chequered and in- 
terrupted by the escape of subterranean fires, having areas over- 
flowed and buried beneath the erupted current. Where the nas- 
cent springs of the Rio del Norte have their birth, the Sierra 
Mimbres culminate to stupendous peaks of perennial snow, lo- 
cally named Sierra San Juan. ae 
_ The concave plain of the San Luis park, begirt by this ellip- 
tical zone of the Sierras, thus capped with a ragged fringe e 
snow projected upward against the canopy, is the receptacle ” 
their converging waters. It is a bowl of vast amplitude, which 
has for countless ages received and kept the sedimentary settlings 
80 prodigious a circuit of Sierras, builded up with every V® 
currents of water, of the atmosphere, of lava. The rocks rent 
from the naked pinnacles, tortured by the intense vicissitudes 
which assail them; the fragments rolled by the perpetual ee 
sure of gravity upon the descending slopes ; the sands and 80 . 
from the foundations of rocks and clays of every gradation a 
hardness; the humus of expired forests and annual vegetation; 
elements carbonized i i 
elements descend, inte 
init, omen ege- 
rit, Covered with soil and varnic re with vege 
* Th soil and varnished over as it we 
occupied by the San Luis lake, is a vast S* — 
