56 
CANON SECTION OF GRAND RIVER. 
him to make them a few presents in his name.” The son of Si-ree-chi-wap replied: “ This is 
your land, and you can go over it at any time. There are bad Indians over the mountains, who 
kill white men, but the Utahs are good, and glad to see the Americans.” Presents were then 
distributed, pipes smoked, and the party moved on, accompanied for several miles by the chiefs. 
We crossed the point of land lying between the Uncompahgra and Grand rivers, reaching the 
latter at Roubideau’s old trading fort, now entirely fallen to ruins. The river is much larger 
than where we left it a week ago; and its water has here a greenish shade, while there it was 
colorless. The Uncompahgra, however, is remarkable for this color of its water, and for a pea- 
green moss, two or three inches long, covering the stones in its bed, even where the stream is 
shallow and very rapid. A mile below the fort we crossed the river at an excellent ford; the 
bottom being a mile in width, and covered with abundant grass. 
The canon which we have been so many days passing around, terminates several miles above 
the junction of the Uncompahgra with Grand river, where the latter receives a large affluent from 
the Elk mountains, known as Smith’s fork. The high ridge, varying from 500 to 1,500 feet in 
height above our path, back of which we passed from Lake fork in avoiding this canon, and which 
is itself cut with deep canones by the Cebolla and other streams, terminates, towards the valley 
of the Uncompahgra, in buttes and clay hills, of which there are two ridges ; the first and lowest, 
of gray, and the second of red clay, bordering the river. Alkali is seen in these hills, as it is also 
in the plain, and is doubtless the chief cause of the barrenness of the soil. From our camp below 
the mouth of the Coochetopa creek, to the junction of Smith’s fork with Grand river, there is 
nothing deserving the name of valley. Now and then there is a small open bottom, from a few 
yards to a mile or two in length, but at the season of high water the river sweeps over these 
spaces, and the stream is never followed even by an Indian trail. 
The difference of elevation between the head of this canon section and our camp, a few miles 
below its termination, on the Uncompahgra, separated from Grand river by a level bottom only, 
is 2,077 feet; and as the distance between these points by the river does not exceed seventy 
miles—of which, perhaps, sixty preserves its canon character—the average descent will vary but 
slightly from thirty feet to the mile. But from the continuance, for so great a distance, of vertical 
rocky walls along the river, ranging from 80 to 1,000 feet and more in height, upon which the road 
must be carried, and which can be cut only by blasting, and, from the deep side-chasms to be 
passed (as described by Captain Gunnison on the 7th instant) only by the heaviest masonry, it % 
is evident that a railroad, although possible, can only be constructed in the vicinity of this section 
of Grand river, at an enormous expense—for the accurate estimate of which, situated as the 
work is at so great a distance from civilization, where not only laborers, but their subsistence, 
must be transported by land carriage nearly 1,000 miles, and where scarcely a stick of timber has 
been seen for the last 100 miles on the route, nor will be for the succeeding 150 miles, suitable 
for a string-piece for a small temporary bridge, or even a railroad tie, it is not too much to say, 
no data exists, nor will until such a labor shall be undertaken. And it would be a waste of labor 
to add even a rude estimate of the cost of so impracticable an undertaking. 
Ascending from the river bottom, our route passed, parallel with it, over a district of pulveru¬ 
lent clay, the surface occasionally incrusted with salt, with small broken crystals of gypsum 
scattered freely about. This soil is formed from the wash of the impure clay-slate bluffs, our 
animals sinking in it to their fetlocks. These bluffs rise one above another until they attain 
an altitude of 1,000 feet, their summits presenting the appearance, as we descended Grand 
river, of an unbroken plain ; but as we pass in front of them they are seen to be cut into deep 
ravines by the small streams which descend from them during rains. In a few miles, however, 
we passed from this soil to a hard one, covered with small fragments of black vesicular vol¬ 
canic rocks scattered over the surface. The men sent forward to select a camp, failed to find 
access to the river; and having travelled 20.33 miles at dark, we encamped without water, and 
on so limited a supply of grass, scattered over the hills, that the most of our animals were tied 
