244 AT THE COCO-MARICOPA AND 
ing east from where we were, the whole prospect was 
shut in by mountains rising one above the other. I 
was informed by Leroux, that such was the character 
of the country all the way to New Mexico; and that 
there were no more broad desert plains or luxuriant 
valleys like those of the Salinas and Gila rivers for the 
entire distance. He came here from Albuquerque, on 
the Rio Grande, by the valley of the Rio Verde, in 
fourteen days. 
We found the river clear and rapid, as at the first 
camp, with many trout, whose silvery sides glittered 
in the translucent stream. The quantity of water 
passing down the Salinas is more than double that of 
the Gila, which only becomes a respectable river after 
it receives the waters of the former. Yet there are 
seasons when the whole is evaporated, or absorbed by 
the sandy bed through which it passes, before reach- 
ing the Colorado. When at Hermosillo, in Sonora, I 
met an American who had passed over the same route, 
and he found the bed dry im many places. 
At five in the afternoon, the heat being less, I 
crept from beneath my shelter of willows, where I had 
spent several hours, and, accompanied by Dr. Webb, 
mounted my mule, and left for the plateau in advance 
of the party. A ride of a mile brought us to the table- 
land, when we made for a large mound or heap which 
arose from the plain. In crossing the bottom we 
passed many irrigating canals; and along the base of 
the plateau was one from twenty to twenty-five feet 
wide, and from four to five feet deep, formed by cut- 
ting down the bank—a very easy mode of construc- 
tion, and which produced a canal much more substan- 
