TO JTJNOTIuN OF GRAND AND GREEN RIVERS. *79 



the Animas and the Pinos haveforced their way to join the San Juan. It is, in fact, an 



expansion oi the valley of the Animas, has been mainly excavated by its current, and 

 is everywhere covered with heds of transported material washed down from the. mount- 

 ains.* 



As we descended into the valley and thus opened it more to the north, we gained 

 Bight of a chain of mountains in that direction, which our guide calls Sierra de los 

 Finos. These are quite lofty, and consist, as I discovered from the drift broueht down 

 from them, of quartzites, silicious slates, limestone, and granite, with some trap, hut 

 with a prevalence of metamorphic over erupted rocks. The Rio de los Pinos is a. clear. 

 cold, trout-stream, full as large as the San Juan at the Pagosa. The bottom-lands are 

 WOoded with willows, cottonwood, alder, etc., and scattered trees of yellow pine, the 

 hitter of which maris its course in the open sage-covered country through which it 

 .low- -o- 1 have naturally suggested the name which it bears. 



The interval between the Rio de los Finos and Rio Florido is underlaid by the 



Middle Cretaceous shales; is gently rolling in outline, its more level surfaces covered 

 with iiage (Artemisia tridentata\ its rounded hills with cedars or scrub-oak. Here 



and there are meadows of good grass, with a Strong growth of annual plants. On the 



whole, however, the country is less picturesque and less productive than thai lvino- 



so ,f h and east of it. 



The Rio Florido, or River of Flowers, is so named from the flowery meadows which 

 line its banks; meadows which, so far as we could see, are no broader, Greener, or 

 more flowery than those which border the other rivers of this region. It is, however, 

 a bright, handsome stream, similar in character* to the Finos, and about half as large, 

 It is probably not more than thirty or forty miles in length; rises in the loot-hills of the 

 Sierra de los Pinos, and joins the Animas some fifteen miles southwest from where we 

 crossed it. The bowlders which it has brought down from its sources are quite varied 

 in character, and probably give ;i very fair representation of the geology of the 

 mountains which it drains. Of these many are composed of coarse v<-d granite, much 

 like that of the Santa Fe Mountains, black and white porphyry, closely resembling 

 that which is so abundant at the gold-mines in the Placer Mountains; blue limestone, 

 containing many of the characteristic ( loal-Measure fossils so common at Santa Fe, such 

 as Productus semirectmdatus, V.nodosus, Spirifer cameratus, Chonetes mesoloba, &c.; with 



these are masses of l'ed and white sandstone, probably Triassic. 



The course of the Florido lies altogether within the basindike area of which I 

 have before spoken. The extent and character of this area were fully learned in an 

 »■■ h I made from our camp on the Florido, about forty miles down the 

 .vim.ias, to visit some extensive and interesting ruins situated in the valley of that 

 Stream some twenty miles above its mouth. From my notes of this trip 1 make the 

 following extracts : 



"AvtfUSt 1///. — Left camp early with Ffeiffer, the Indian audit, .Messrs. Fisher and 

 Dorsey, and several Indians, to visit the ruins reported to exist at a certain point on the 

 hanks of the Animas; crossed over in a direct line to the Animas, a distance of about 

 ten miles. All this interval is occupied by a gravel mesa, of which the surface is 



" Since named Aniiim* I'.u k. 



