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Show SANTA CLARA EIVEE. 217 The road continued through a romantic pass, which wound around the foot of the mountains. When we reached the divide where the waters flow towards the Gulf of California, the scene that presented itself was grand and sublime. We camped on the banks of a beautiful stream, the Santa Clara, on the margins of which I observed the rose-tree, in full bearing, also cottonwood, ash, besides shrubs of different kinds, all in bloom. The air was filled with fragrance, and the scene presented a harmonious and refreshing landscape. This paradise is without a solitary living human inhabitant. These plants and flowers are literally "Wasting their sweetness on the desert air." We travelled twenty miles this morning, when, after giving our horses a resting-spell, we continued on our journey through this luxuriantly beautiful valley, crossing and re-crossing the Santa Clara six times. This river runs in a serpentine direction, almost due south, the waters of which were, at this time, much swollen. At the last crossing, my mule went in over his head, and I got a wetting as the price of my ferriage. The wagons had to be pulled over quickly, with all the horses attached to them, by long ropes; the current was so strong as nearly to overturn them. Almost everything at the bottom of the wagons was wet. The east side of the river, is a continuation of picturesque, abrupt rocks, very much the appearance of the canons on Grand River, except that the formation is a black ironstone rock, while that of the" Grand River is sandstone. The Santa Clara River, has no connection with the 10 |