Rocky Mountains. 161 



crossing the river, and by the rapid descent of the current, 

 th.t it niu) readily be recognized by any who shall pass that 

 way hereafter. In this view we attach some importance to 

 .it, as the only spot, in a distance of six hundred miles, we 

 can hope to identify by description. In ascending, when the 

 traveller arrives at this point, he has little to expect beyond 

 but sandy wastes, and thirsty inhospitable steppes. The skirts 

 of the hilly and wooded region extend to a distance of fifty 

 or sixty miles above; but even this district is indifferently 

 supplied with water. Beyond, commences the wide sandy de- 

 sert stretching westward to the base of the Rocky Mountains. 

 We have little apprehension of giving too unfavorable an ac- 

 count of this portion of the country. Though the soil is, in 

 some places, fertile, the want of timber, of navigable streams, 

 and of water for the necessities of life, render it an unfit 

 residence for any but a nomade population. The traveller 

 who shall, at any time, have traversed its desolate sands will, 

 we think, join us in the wish that this region may forever 

 remain the unmolested haunt of the native hunter, the bison, 

 the prairie wolf, and the marmot. 



One mile below this point, (which we call the falls of the 

 Canadian, rather for the sake of a name than as considering 

 it worthy to be thus designated, j is the entrance from the 

 south of a river fifty yards wide. Its banks are lined with 

 tall forests of cotton-wood and sycamore, and its bottoms 

 are wide and fertile. Its bed is less choked with sand than 

 that of the river to which it is tributary. Six or eight miles 

 farther down, and on the other side, is the confluence of the 

 Great North Fork, discharging at least three times as much 

 ■water as we found above it. It is about eighty yards wide. 

 The beds of both these tributaries are covered with water 

 from shore to shore; but they have gentle currents, and are 

 not deep, and neither of them have, in any considerable de- 

 gree, that red tinge which characterises the Canadian. We 

 have already mentioned, that what we consider the sources 



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