Rocky Mowitains, 39 



were now reduced to the necessity of feeding on our scanty 

 allowance of a gill of parched maize per day to each man, 

 this being the utmost our limited stores would aftord. 



On the sixteenth of July, we moved from our encamp- 

 ment on Boiling spring creek, in a south-western direction to 

 the Arkansa. This ride of twenty-eight mikd, which we 

 finished without having once dismounted from our aorses, 

 occupied about ten hours of a calm sultry day, in every 

 respect like the preceding, in which the thermometer in the 

 shade had ranged from 90 to 100°. Our route lay across a 

 tract of low, but somewhat broken sandstone of an uncom- 

 monly slaty structure. It is fine-grained with an argillaceous 

 cement, and of a light gray or yellowish-white colour. It con- 

 tains thin beds of bituminous clay slate, and we saw scatter- 

 ed on the surface some small crystals of Selenite. It is tra- 

 versed by numerous deep ravines in which at this time not a 

 drop of water was to be found. 



The soil is scanty and of incurable barrenness. Thete;tture 

 of the rock is so loose and porous, as to unfit it for retaining 

 any portion of the water which falls upon it in rains. A few 

 dwarfish cedars and pines are scattered over a surface of loose 

 dusty soil intermixed with thin lamellar fragments of sandstone, 

 and nearly destitute of grass or herbage of any kind. Our suf- 

 ferings from thirst, heat, and fatigue were excessive, and were 

 aggravated by the almost unlimited extent of the prospect 

 before us, which promised nothing but a continuation of the 

 same dreary and disgusting scenery. Late in the afternoon 

 we arrived at the brink of the precipice which divides the 

 high plains from the valley of the Arkansa. This is here nar- 

 row, and so deeply sunk in the horizontal sandstone, that al- 

 though thei'e are trees of considerable size growing along the 

 river, they do not rise to the level of the surface of the great 

 plain, and from a little distance on either side the valley is 

 entirely hid. Here our thirst and impatience were for some 

 time tantalized with the view of the cool and verdant valley 



