THIS HAYBKM ^PEWITipSf. 
JHoremeiit* 1 and Workings oi tUe D5f- 
S«re»*i Parties..«e©logical Problems 
■..The Mount of the Holy Cross—Its 
Ascent, Description, Ktc--Eagle Riv¬ 
er—The Elk Mountain Peaks. 
Camp OB' the United States Geo logical 
and Geographical Suevkv, f 
On Eagle liveb, August %>, 18/3. ) 
My last letter to you was closed on Satur¬ 
day the 16th, on Lake creek, and I continue 
the brief summary of events since that 
time. 
! The two parties met early this week in the 
Arkansas valley near Oro, Mr, Jackson hav¬ 
ing replaced, with improvements, the lost 
panoramic views from La Plata, and taken 
other pictures of great beauty, about the 
Twin Lakes. That, in passing, both parties 
put their legs under Mr. Derry’s “mahoga¬ 
ny” and indulged to their utmost capacity 
in the products of the dairy and of female 
culinary handiwork, you will hardly need to 
be told. 
Ournew camp was close by Weston’s ranch, 
but Judge Weston was absent on business at 
Granite, and we did not see him. It was 
also just opposite the two enormous moun¬ 
tains which front the great range just here,— 
Mt. Elbert and the one which we have hitherto 
known provisionally as “Massive Mountain,” 
from the immense scale on which it is built,but 
which we now call “Grand Mountain.” Both 
are over 14,000 feet high. The line of peaks 
of that altitude belonging to the range ends 
here, and for some distance to the north 
no first class summit is found, until the line j 
rises again at its northern end into the great | 
mountain of the Holy Cross, 
j The business near Oro was to resupply for 
further operations. Hardly any of the party 
went up California gulch to the little village 
j itself, and I can give you no special informa¬ 
tion as to it or its interests, save that its pros¬ 
perity, like that of the other mining towns | 
about, is on the wane, and a single mine 
(Mr. Hill’s) is at present its main support. 
The turbid flow of the Arkansas, below its j 
junction with the creek from the gulch, was 
enough to show us that not less than this was 
going on. An abundant mail received at , 
Oro kept the chiefs of the survey mainly 
busied, during the day spent in camp, with 
correspondence. But a little time was given 
to the examination of the terraces, which, es¬ 
pecially on the east side of the valley, are 
hereabouts among its most strikng fea¬ 
tures. The highest rises near five hund¬ 
red feet above the river at our camp, and its 
remains extend several miles up the valley ; 
but it has been so cut down and washed out 
by streams that it seems most like a series of 
ridges stretching into the valley from the 
eastern range. Its largest fragment wasjust 
opposite us, showing for halfa mile a surface 
as beautifully level, and an edge as straight 
as those of a table. Recent stratified depos- 
i its, half hardened into rock, cropped out on 
one broken slope. This and the other lower 
terraces prove the valley to have been a lake 
before the river wore its way through th $ 
rocky ridges that cross it lower down. But j 
the details of the action were left to be j 
worked out by Mr. Gannett’s party. 
Yesterday morning, then, we started up 
the valley. This, for six or eight miles, re¬ 
tained its broad and open character, and the | 
wagon road which we follow is much trav¬ 
eled. The river dwindles by degrees, and 
finally, when we have left behind a larger 
branch, which comes in from a passage 
in the eastern range, it becomes 
hardly better than a mere 
brook. A round wooded hill shuts off the 
valley, and we enter the defile on its left. 
Here the brook is filled and covered with 
railroad ties, cut in the woods near, and to 
be floated down, when the water serves, to 
Pueblo. We had seen traces of this business 
further down; and it, along with James 
4rcher’s mine (which we had to leave un¬ 
visited,) explain the well-used wagon road. 
This road accompanies us to the very head 
of the meadow where the Arkansas heads; 
then comes an open wooded hill of but a 
couple of hundred feet in height; aud when 
we have begun to descend its further slope,we 
have crossed the Tennessee pass, and are on 
the Pacific side of tne continent. An easier - 
and less marked divide between the two sides 
is hardly to be found, and the altitude is lit¬ 
tle more than tt ■ thousand feet. The road 
had changed to a trail, but a well-marked 
one, which went down the brook that began 
the Eagle river, changing from side to side 
as the nature of the shores required. Instead, 
however, of the broad valley which on the 
other side of the pass separates for more than 
fifty miles two perfectly distinct ranges,we had 
here a narrow passage through a labyrinth 
of hills, more or less rugged and precipitous, 
which cut off entirely the view of the higher 
mountains behind them. An intricate geolo¬ 
gy, too, of central gneiss with lime and sand 
rock overlying, and plenty oferuptiye. For 
an hour we had open and easy going ; then 
] the river canoned, aud our path was a hard 
one, with plenty ot stones and swampy 
places ; and after an hour of this we emerged 
Into a meadow, broad and grassy, on the 
lower part of which we camped. Here, as 
we found by climbing a height near the 
oump, we were not far from opposite to the- 
Holy Cross mountain (of which we had so 
far caught not a glimpse;) but we 
were far from having reached th« 
approaches to the mountain. For 
j its water runs off toward the 
northeast, and between long and gently- 
sloping but very rugged aud forbidding j 
spurs,of which the slope is determined by the j 
1 dip of the sedimentary beds surrounding the 
1 granitic or igneous core of the mountain, and 
finally all the nearer of the valleys between 
tlhese spurs come down into an inaccessible i 
sjanon, So we have made another whole 
day’s journey without yet reaching a point 
i from which we can begin to attack the 
I mountain itself. To avoid- the canon, the 
I trail first goes over a precipitous cut-off, 
where a triangular isolated peak is left in 
1 the angle between the fork we were follow¬ 
ing and another heavy creek that comes in 
from the east; then it climbs the hill on th< 
right, at least a thousand feet up, and skirls 
it, crossing numerous gullies, for perhaps 
eight miles*, till we come down at last to the 
A, 
7 
