Miscellaneous Intelligence. 293 
plain. 
quarter. The sun was already 
the day advanced, whirled the 
; us. 
__ “For the first three or four miles after leaving the Salse, the plain pre- 
‘Sented a smooth surface of sand and bluish clay, baked and fissured, and 
strewn sparingly with volcanic cinders and obsidian fragments. Round 
oles marked the escape of gas when the ground was softened by water. — 
Soon the plain became cut up with ravines three or four feet in depth, 
which José said were the arms of ‘New river,’ which branched out before 
entering the salt lake. The remains of a most luxuriant vegetation, now 
dead and ‘dry, proved the place to be a desert only for want of water. 
The suddenness and rankness of grass and weed growth where the New 
river broke away from the Colorado, some years since, and irrigated t 
, desert, is remembered by many who witnessed the magic-like transition 
from barrenness to fertility. An intervening sandy district confused our 
Course—loose and drifting but not deep—and fortunately no sand-sterm 
~ gotten up for our benefit while age it. 
n; the wi 
= e an 
_ Present position until they were somewhat recruited, so arrangements were _ 
: made for a shelter from the sun, A black cloud that had been slowly 
_ SECOND SERIES, Vor XXVI, No. 77.—SEPT., 1858 
aS wt : 
iy 
