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Show 80 RECONNAISSANCE IN THE UTE COUNTRY. progress. The crops seemed immature, but in other respects were good. Shocks of wheat were stauding in the field. The straw of these crops was short, the grain remarkably plump and firm, and the best fields would yield about ten bushels per acre. On the right side of the valley the mountain slope is covered with white and yellow clay. On the left, a few miles below Camp 28, the formations change to those of volcanic rocks, including trachyte, dolerite, and hornblendic rocks. The broad valley, for the last three days, terminates at the junction of the south fork of the Arkansas Eiver. One mile below Camp 28 is a vein of carbonate and oxide of copper in quartzitic slate. Xo evidence that it is a true lode. Immediately below this is a ledge of gray cherty limestone, three hundred feet in height, much changed by heat. No organic remains found except small fragments of Cynthophyllum. This ledge dips rapidly down stream and soon disappears beneath the valley. This is succeeded by hard ferruginous gray and blue sandstone in thick ledges, dipping at an angle of forty- five degrees with the direction of the stream, to Camp 29, a distance of three miles, developing a bulk of many thousand feet. Soon after leaving Camp 30 the sandstone of yesterday began to thin out, and, on reaching Pleasant Valley, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles, it existed only in fragment ledges on the slopes of the mountains. Volcanic productions assumed the place of sandstone, and in large deposits of coarse, reddish- brown, trachy- dolerite. The lower portions of the valley, the slopes, are a red micaceous granite with masses of gneiss. The valley averages about one and a half miles in width and seven hundred and fifty long, a portion of which may be irrigated. Passed several farms with a portion of their crops in the field. The wheat a fine berry and will yield ten bushels per acre. Pleasant Valley terminates in three formidable canons. Through the first and largest flows the Arkansas Eiver. Through the next, on the right, the Arkansas receives Spring Creek. One furlong further down the stream, and also on the right, is a dry canon. These united exhibit an amount of erosion rarely seen in so small a compass. The walls are of red granite with irregular beds of gneiss. Immediately after leaving Pleasant Valley, the road leads among the foot- hills up to the high table- land. On the right of the river, conglomerate white clays, mixed with gravel and chalky limestone, were observed as high up as eight hundred feet above the valley; wherever we descended below that level, during the day, there were indications of these formations. Our march to- day was over high and undulating table- lands, as the Arkansas Eiver is reported to flow through a continuous caiion, from Pleasant Valley to Canon City. In the vicinity of Camp 32 is a ledge of rocks from which I obtained specimens containing diorite and epi-dote, quartzite, and epidote and feldstone. The trail, like yesterday, passed over high table- lands. Visited the iron- ore beds on Pine Creek, a branch of Grape Creek, a southern confluent of the Arkansas Eiver. Saw none of the ore in the natural bed, but several low round mounds were covered with rich specimens. These mounds occur at intervals for two miles or more. The ore is associated with dolerite; the mountain in the vicinity seemed volcanic and of this mineral. The walls of the canon in which we were encamped are of granite with irregular masses of gneiss. Two miles below Camp 33 we enter a valley six miles long and three miles broad, in which are ledges of brown and yellow sandstone dipping |
