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Show Page 144 Though the weather held cold and rainy at times, with frost at night, the landscape began to afford dense grasses which greatly refreshed the stock. Orson knew that the elevation increased gradually as they continued westward. The higher land began to show outcropping rock, limestone bluffs which prefigured the foothills of the Rockies. Already the cloudy peaks of distant Colorado foamed to the south, and the curiously shaped cliffs looked to Orson like "cones or pyramids...of remarkable picturesque beauty." Fascinated by these formations, Orson filled his days with quick ascensions, examining the marl, the flowers and birds, the eagles' nests, with a naturalist's eye. He called the place "Cobble Hills," due to the huge pebbles and the bizarre petrified bones scattering the ground. It was near this point, went the folk geography of the emigrant, that the true West began - here, where the mean annual rainfall fell below twenty inches and the gnarled limestone bluffs resembled "the ruins of a world," as Washington Irving had described it. The Mormons spoke with the same melancholy, christening the bluffs "the Ancient Ruins," for th« crenelated walls and towers. At last the "Camp of Israel" had wandered into a New World "Wilderness of Sinai." Orson mounted the cliffs and suspended his barometer in a small cedar - he found his measurements and recorded the meridian of Chimney Rock, a hazy spire in the distance. He was more and more dissatisfied with the Charles Preuss map copied from Fremont's Emigrant's Guide. Certain that the accuracy of his own observations far outmatched those of the published route, he resolved to develop his own emigration guidebook - he and Clayton began piecing it together from notes and from the readings given by the sliding wooden gears under Johnson's wagon. The party always kept in remembrance the thousands who, within two months, would traverse these same badlands, and began leaving mileage posts - the first ever |
