80 
CHARACTER AND FERTILITY OF THE COUNTRY. 
manded, will reward the efforts of labor; but the amount of water is so small that it never can 
supply more than the limited wants of a sparse pastoral population. Entering the mountains, 
the small valleys and paiks abound in the most luxuriant grass, furnishing abundant pasturage 
for a given amount of stock; but these fields are very limited in extent, and generally too cold 
for cultivation. Rains are, however, not wanting in these lovely mountain retreats. The exten¬ 
sive valley of San Luis, lying between the Sierra Blanca on the east and the Sierra San Juan 
on the west, and watered by the Rio Grande del Norte and its numerous small tributaries, is 
in general one vast sage plain from the Rio Colorado to Gunnison’s Pass. The grass on the lower 
tributaries of the Rio del Norte, in this valley, is very limited indeed; it is more abundant on the 
upper affluents, where a few fields of prairie grass, a mile or two in width, were observed, and 
the authority of our guide given for extensive grass prairies on the Rio del Norte itself. But 
all these grass fields, with the greatest amount of cultivation which can be supplied with water 
from the fine little streams of this valley, can, under the most favorable circumstances, only 
support a meagre population. The margins of the mountain streams about the Coochetopa Pass 
furnish some fine grass, which extends down to Grand river; but the hills on either side of this 
route are barren and naked, and no land can be found among them capable of sustaining even 
small settlements other than for grazing purposes. 
The immense valley depression, from thirty to fifty miles in width, between the Elk mount¬ 
ains and the Sierra de la Plata, filled with rocky and broken hills, mesas and connecting mountain 
ranges, through which Grand river flows in canones, is almost destitute of land which can be 
cultivated. The hills are often densely covered with sage; and some of the most luxuriant and 
extensive fields of grass seen on the route were traversed among these hills and tables. The 
small spaces of bottom land on Grand river, at the junction of the Coochetopa and at Roubi- 
deau’s old fort, are the only ones on that stream, in the long distance which we followed it, which 
can be called bottom lands; and these are not only very small for settlements, but are frequently, 
if not annually, overflowed. 
The Roan or Book mountains fill a large space between Grand and Green, rivers, and leave to 
the south of them only an arid, sterile, pulverulent waste, with bunch-grass enough on the hills for 
passing droves and herds of stock. And from Green river to the Wahsatch mountains, the mis¬ 
erable soil maintains the same ash-heap friability. The country is very rocky sandstone, broken, 
upheaved, and intersected in every direction by ravines, chasms, and beds of creeks. A little 
bunch-grass is scattered over the hills, but they are generally barren or covered, as on the mar¬ 
gins of the streams, with sage. Such, also, is the character of the country from the foot of Book 
mouniains to the Sierra Abajo, near the junction of Grand and Green rivers. This section is, 
therefore, not only crossed with great labor and difficulty, but is entirely valueless for the wants 
of civilized man. The summit of the Wahsatch mountains is a finely-grassed region, but entirely 
unfit for cultivation. The extensive valleys of the upper Sevier river and of the Sevier lake, 
divided by the Un-kuk-oo-ap mountains, are vast artemisia plains, with a dry, friable, or sandy 
soil, quite uninhabitable, except on the grassy bases of the mountains, where an occasional 
mountain stream affords a limited supply of water for irrigation. 
In these plains, as in all those west from the vicinity of Bent’s Fort, on the Arkansas, to the 
Basin, and in a few instances in the mountains also, the soil is more or less impregnated with 
alkali, which is very destructive to vegetation; and salt is often seen efflorescing upon the surface. 
And as the amount which is annually carried off by lixiviation and drainage—from the very lim¬ 
ited amounts of rain and snow which are precipitated upon this extensive district in proportion 
to its area, and the very great inequality in their distribution over it, for the great body of the 
rain and snow annually falls upon the higher peaks and ranges, and is carried down to the main 
streams through deep canones and chasms, leaving the plains parched and dry—is constantly 
renewed from the decomposition of sedimentary rocks, it is impossible to anticipate the period 
when the supply will be exhausted; and if the progress of science should develop the means of 
