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Show -11- I have the honor to be, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant, H. S. Burton, Captain, Third Artillery, U.S.A. Hon. R. W. Johnson, Chairman Committee on Public Lands, U. S. Senate. Letter of Major (now General) Emory of the United States Army. Washington, March 24, 1860. Dear Sir: In reply to your note, received this morning, asking me to furnish you a statement in writing "showing the physical geography of that portion of country between the eastern base of the main range of mountains on the Pacific coast and the junction of the Gila and Colorado Rivers," &c, I beg to refer you to my several reports on that subject, viz: Notes of Military Reconnaissance. Senate Ex. Doc. No. 7, Thirtieth Congress, first session, pp. 100-103, and Mexican Boundary Report, Ex. Doc. 108, Thirty-fourth Congress, first session, part 2, vol. 1, pp. 87, 88, and from p. 92 to p. 97, part 4, vol. 1, and also to the manuscript maps of the boundary of the desert deposited in the Department of the Interior. The desert character of that country, the obstacles it presents to the transportation of Government supplies and to emigration, are undoubted. These obstacles, unless removed, must in the end force all travel to take the circuitous sea route. That they will ever be removed under our present mode of disposing of the public lands is impossible. No single owner of a section of land, or of any ten consecutive sections of land, could, with the least prospect of success, attempt the cultivation of any part of the desert. To open any portion to settlement would |
