27th. We commenced our march this morning at six o'clock, travelled, as our custom usually was, till the hour of eleven, and then halted to breakfast, on the bank of the stream. The face of the country along the morning's trail was much the same as that passed over the day before; often beautiful, but oftener sublime. Vast spherical swells covered with buffalo, and wild flowering glens echoing the voices of a thousand cascades, and countless numbers of lofty peaks crowding the sky, will give perhaps a faint idea of it. As the stream that we had been following bore to the westward of our course, we in the afternoon struck across a range of low hills to another branch of it that came down from the eastern mountains, and encamped upon its banks. These hills were composed of hard gravel, covered with two or three inches of {262} black loam. In the deep vales the mountain torrents had swept away the soil, and left the strata bare for miles along their courses. The mountain flax and the large thistle flourished everywhere. The timber was the same in kind as we had passed the three last days. The groves were principally confined to the lower portions of the ravines which swept down from the snowy heights. The Anahuac range in the west appeared to dip deeper in the horizon, and recede farther from us. One half only of its altitude as seen from the dividing ridges was now visible. We were doubtless lessening our own altitude materially, but the difference in the apparent height of this ridge was in part produced by its increased distance. It had evidently begun to tend rapidly towards the Pacific.
An aged knight of the order of horns strode across our path near four o'clock, and by his princely bearing invited our trapper to a tilt. His Kentucky blood could not be challenged with impunity. He dropped upon one knee—drew a close sight—clove the bull's heart in twain, and sent him groaning upon the sand. He was very poor, but as we had reason to fear that we were leaving the buffalo {263} "beat," it was deemed prudent to increase the weight of our pack with the better portion of his flesh. Accordingly the tongue, heart, leaf fat and the "fleece" were taken, and were being lashed to our mule, when an attack of bilious bravery seized our giant in the extremities, and he began to kick and beat his horse for presuming to stand upon four legs, or some similar act, without his permission, in such gallant style, that our mule on which the meat was placed, leaped affrighted from us and dropped it on the sand. We were all extremely vexed at this, and I believe made some disparaging comparisons between the intellects of asses and tyrants. Whether our mule or Smith felt most aggrieved thereby we were never informed. But the matter was very pleasantly disposed of by our benevolent old guide. He turned the meat with his foot and kicked it good-naturedly from him, saying in his blandest manner, "No dirt in the mounting but sand; the teeth can't go that;" and mounted his horse for the march. We travelled twenty miles and encamped.
28th. Eighteen miles down the small valleys between the sharp and rugged hills; crossed a number of small streams running {264} westward. The mountains along our way differed in character from any we had heretofore passed. Some of them were composed entirely of earth, and semi-elliptical in form; others embraced thousands of acres of what seemed to be mere elevations of fine brown gravel, rising swell above swell, and sweeping away to the height of two thousand feet, destitute of timber save a few slender strips which grew along the rills that trickled at long intervals down their sides.[135] We encamped again on the bank of the main stream. It was one hundred yards in width; water a foot and a half deep, current six miles the hour.
29th. To-day we struck Grand River, (the great southern branch of the Colorado of the west), twenty miles from our last night's encampment. It is here three hundred yards wide; current, six miles the hour; water, from six to ten feet in depth, transparent, but, like the atmosphere, of much higher temperature than we had met with since leaving the Arkansas. The valleys that lie upon this stream and some of its tributaries, are called by the hunters "The Old Park." If the qualifying term were omitted, they would be well described by their name.[136] Extensive meadows running {265} up the valleys of the streams, woodlands skirting the mountain bases and dividing the plains, over which the antelope, black and white-tailed deer, the English hare, the big horn or mountain sheep, the grisly, grey, red and black bears, and the buffalo and elk range—a splendid park indeed; not old, but new as in the first fresh morning of the creation.
Here also are found the prairie and the large grey wolf, the American panther, beaver, polecat, and land otter. The grisly bear is the largest and most ferocious—with hair of a dirty-brown colour, slightly mixed with those of a yellowish white. The males not unfrequently weigh five or six hundred pounds. The grey bear is less in size, hair nearly black, interspersed along the shoulders and hips with white. The red is still less, according to the trappers, and of the colour indicated by the name. The black bear is the same in all respects as those inhabiting the States. The prairie dog is also found here, a singular animal, partially described in a previous page; but as they may be better known from Lieutenant Pike's description of them, I shall here introduce it:[137] "They live in towns and villages, having an evident police established {266} in their communities. The sites of these towns are generally on the brow of a hill, near some creek or pond, in order to be convenient to water and to be exempt from inundation. Their residence is in burrows, which descend in spiral form." The Lieutenant caused one hundred and forty kettles of water to be poured into one of their holes in order to drive out the occupant, but failed. "They never travel more than half a mile from their homes, and readily associate with rattlesnakes. They are of a dark brown colour, except their bellies, which are red. They are something larger than a grey squirrel, and very fat; supposed to be graminivorous. Their villages sometimes extend over two or three miles square, in which there must be innumerable hosts of them, as there is generally a burrow every ten steps. As you approach the towns, you are saluted on all sides by the cry of "wishtonwish," uttered in a shrill piercing manner."
The birds of these regions are the sparrow-hawk, the jack-daw, a species of grouse of the size of the English grouse; colour brown, a tufted head, and limbs feathered to the feet; the raven, very large, turkey, turkey-buzzards, geese, all the varieties of ducks {267} known in such latitudes, the bald and grey eagle, meadow lark and robin red breast. Of reptiles, the small striped lizard, horned frog and garter snake are the most common. Rattlesnakes are said to be found among the cliffs, but I saw none.
We forded Grand River, and encamped in the willows on the northern shore. The mountains in the west, on which the snow was lying, were still in sight. The view to the east and south was shut in by the neighbouring hills; to the north and north-east it was open, and in the distance appeared the Wind River and other mountains, in the vicinity of the 'Great Gap.'[138]
During the evening, while the men were angling for trout, Kelly gave me some account of Grand River and the Colorado of the west. Grand River, he said, is a branch of the Colorado.[139] It rises far in the east among the precipitous heights of the eastern range of the Rocky Mountains, about midway from the Great Gap and the Kenyon of the south Fork of the Platte. It interlocks the distance of sixty miles with the waters of the Great Platte; its course to the point where we crossed, is nearly due west. Thence it continues in a west by north course one hundred and {268} sixty miles, where it breaks through the Anahuac Ridge. The cliffs of this Kenyon are said to be many hundred feet high, and overhanging; within them is a series of cascades, which, when the river is swollen by the freshets in June, roar like Niagara.[140]
After passing this Kenyon, it is said to move with a dashing, foaming current in a westerly direction fifty miles, where it unites with Green River, or Sheetskadee, and forms the Colorado of the west. From the junction of these branches the Colorado has a general course from the north-east to the south-west, of seven hundred miles to the head of the Gulf of California. Four hundred of this seven hundred miles is an almost unbroken chasm of Kenyon, with perpendicular sides, hundreds of feet in height, at the bottom of which the waters rush over continuous cascades. This Kenyon terminates thirty miles above the Gulf. To this point the river is navigable.[141] The country on each side of its whole course is a rolling desert of brown loose earth, on which the rains and dews never fall.
A few years since, two Catholic Missionaries and their servants, on their way from the mountains to California, attempted to descend the Colorado. They have never {269} been seen since the morning they commenced their fatal undertaking.[142] A party of trappers and others made a strong boat and manned it well, with the determination of floating down the river to take the beaver, which they supposed to live along its banks; but they found themselves in such danger after entering the kenyon, that with might and main they thrust their trembling boat ashore, and succeeded in leaping upon the crags, and lightening it before it was swallowed in the dashing torrent. But the death which they had escaped in the stream, still threatened them on the crags. Perpendicular and overhanging rocks frowned above them; these they could not ascend. They could not cross the river; they could not ascend the river, and the foaming cascades below forbade the thought of committing themselves again to their boat.