34 
VISIT TO THE GREENHORN SETTLEMENT. 
deep at the ford which we crossed. Encamping two miles above the ford, Captain Gunnison 
ascended a neighboring butte, and thus describes the view: “Pike’s Peak to the north, the Span¬ 
ish Peaks to the south, the Sierra Mojada to the west, and the plains from the Arkansas—undu¬ 
lating with hills along the route we have come, but sweeping up in a gentle rise where we should 
have come—with the valleys of the Cuchara and Huerfano, make the finest prospect it has ever 
fallen to my lot to have seen.” Accompanied by five men, I started at an early hour of the 
morning in search of the Greenhorn settlement, on a stream of the same name rising in a range 
of mountains to the east of the Wet river valley, to obtain information of the country, and, if 
possible, procure a guide well acquainted with it and with the mountain passes we were about 
to explore. Our course from camp was W. N. W., in a direct line for the Wet mountains, 
crossing the Cuchara at the point at which we had visited it the previous evening. The banks 
were here vertical walls of clay, twenty feet in depth, resting on a stratum of shale. We de¬ 
scended through a break in the bank, and following the bed of the stream for some distance, 
ascended the opposite bank through a similar opening. The borders of the river are here entirely 
destitute of grass. A few miles below us, plainly in sight, the river enters a canon; the hills 
about it, and an unusual extent of rolling country, being covered with a thick growth of low 
cedar. On the table-land beyond this river we passed innumerable prairie-dog towns, herds of 
deer and antelope, and several bands of beautiful wild horses, which came circling round us in 
all the pride of their native freedom, at a distance of fifty or eighty yards, and at the report of a 
rifle dashing wildly away over prairie, hill, and valley, exciting our admiration. On this table¬ 
land we also passed basins of rain-water some hundreds of yards in diameter, which in dry seasons 
are themselves doubtless dry. Ten miles from the Cuchara we descended 'from the table-land to 
the valley of a stream evidently rising in the position laid down on some maps for the Huerfano, 
and on whose southern bank we had an hour before had a fine view of an isolated butte in its 
bottom—a feature of this valley marked and unmistakable. It is from this butte, from its isolation 
known as the Huerfano or Orphan butte, that this river derives its name. This stream we 
crossed as we had the Cuchara; its volume of water being less than that of the latter stream, and 
its clay banks, overlying the shale of the bed, of less height. The Huerfano between this point 
and the head of its cation, seen a few miles distant to the east, and which is said to be the 
longest in this part of the country, has but little timber on its banks. The Cuchara enters the 
Huerfano in this long canon, and the river for eighteen miles between the mouth of its canon and 
the Arkansas, it is said, has a large border of cotton-wood. We next came to the Apache 
creek, whose sources in the Wet mountains had been visible during our morning ride. It is a 
small mountain stream, with water at this time only in pools. Willow, plum, thorn, and cherry 
bushes, with a few cotton-wood trees, grow densely thick on its borders, and we were detained 
an hour in making a passage through them. Beyond this creek we entered upon a wide open 
valley of weeds, prickly-pears, and sand, and I changed my course a little more to the north, 
hoping to strike the trail from Taos to the Greenhorn near the base of the mountains, which we 
reached after a ride of four miles, finding the trail as anticipated. Following this trail we rose 
over a hill and descended into a rough narrow ravine, which we followed in a northeast direc¬ 
tion for a mile and a half, and then passed over a high ridge—a spur of the Wet mountains— 
covered with oak bushes, to another ravine, on the sides of which we were gladdened by the 
sight of a herd of cattle and horses feeding, and were soon in the camp of a trader from New 
Mexico returning from Fort Laramie. From him we learned that the two streams and ravines 
are called the Granaros, by the Spaniards. Passing over another sharp ridge, we descended in 
two miles to the fine little valley of the Greenhorn, a stream of two feet in width and three or four 
inches in depth, which is now entirely diverted from its natural channel and employed in irrigating 
the lands of the six New Mexican families who reside at and constitute the present population of 
the place. They plant a few acres of corn and of wheat, of beans and of water-melons—in all, an 
area equal to that of the farm of a small eastern farmer, who cultivates his own fields. Two hun- 
