74 
The Colorado River 
prowling on the heights. In daylight his brother, the wild-cat, 
reminds one of Tabby at home by the fireside. There is the 
lynx, too, among the rocks; and on the higher planes the deer, 
elk, and bear have their homes. In Green River Valley once 
roamed thousands of bison. The more arid districts have the 
fewest large animals, and conversely the more humid the most, 
though in the latter districts the fauna and flora approach that 
of the eastern part of the continent, while as the former are 
approached the difference grows wider and wider, till in the 
southern lowlands there is no resemblance to eastern types at 
all. Once the streams everywhere had thousands of happy 
beaver, with their homes in the river banks, or in waters deep¬ 
ened by their clever dams. Otter, too, were there. The larger 
rivers are not favourable for fish on account of the vast amount 
of sediment, but in the smaller, especially in the mountain 
streams, trout were abundant. In Green River occurs a 
salmon-trout attaining a length of at least four feet. This is 
also found in the Colorado proper, where another fish, with a 
humpback, is to be caught. I do not know the name of this, 
but imagine it the same as has in latter days been called 
“squaw-fish.” 
All over the region the rocks are seamed by mineral veins. 
Some of these have already poured forth millions of dollars, 
while others await a discoverer. On the river itself gold is 
found in the sands; and the small alluvial bottoms that occur 
in Glen Canyon, and a few gravel bars in the Grand, have been 
somewhat profitably worked, though necessarily on a small 
scale. The granite walls of the Grand Canyon bear innumer¬ 
able veins, but as prospecting is there so difficult it will be 
rriany a long year before the best are found. The search for 
mineral veins has done much to make the farther parts known, 
just as the earlier search for beaver took white men for the first 
time into the fastnesses of the great mountains, and earlier the 
effort to save the souls of the natives marked their main trails 
into the wilderness. 
This sketch of the Basin of the Colorado is most inade¬ 
quate, but the scope of this volume prevents amplification in 
this direction. These few pages, however, will better enable 
