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Show 40 NATIONAL WAGON ROAD GUIDE. on the Pacific coast, and are really ludicorously musical; with great strength of voice and variety of tone; they weigh from two to four pounds, and as they range themselves along the edge of the water, look more like as many pigs, stripped of their hair and part1y set up on end, than they do like frogs. Crickets and grasshoppers are, in many places, exceedingly numerous, the former of great size, often two inches in. length, and of a light brown color. The tarantula, a large and venomous spider, the scorpion, and the centipede, are rarely though sometimes seen. The horned toad is sometimes met with, and is an animal so unique in appearance, that "re give a life-size engraving of it. But very fe,v animals except the large brown, or jackass hare, are seen between the South Pass and the Sierra Nevada mountains ; though a single trip into the high mountain valleys, invisible from below, brought to our view a beautiful flock of the big-horn, or· Rocky Mountain sheep ; but so timid, we could make no possible approach towards them after being discovered. These, with the black tailed deet, cervus macrotis, rarely seen, make the list of wild animals seen by the traveler along the route, nearly complete. VEGETATION OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. I-Iere we have almost a misnomer, for really there is very little of vegetation upon the Rocky. J\tiountains; • NATIONAL WAGON ROAD GUIDE. 41 and this one general feature, their almost total barrenness, not only of trees, but of all vegetation, ~swell along · the great main chain, as upon all the spurs, isolated peaks or ranges adjacent thereto, surprised us. We bad supposed them to be covered, like most of our eastern mountains, with vast and almost impenetrable forests; in addition to which, we had imagined them filled with dark and dangerous jungles and defiles, where numerous wild animals found a safe retreat, and the Indian only, knew of their most secret fastnesses ; but on the contrary, all is bleak, barren, and desolate, save here and there, around some high n1ountain spring, "\vithin a sheltered nook, a small clump of stinted cedars, or dark colored pines, manage to eke out an existence. E"'or nearly a hundred miles previous to reaching the South Pass, the road lies along the valley of the Sweet Water, a tributary of the Platte. Along the windings of this stream, are narrow alluvials producing good grass, and during the early part of summer at least, a variety of flowers. All else than the river bottoms is a rolling plain, interspersed with mountain ridges, spurs of the great 1nain range, and nearly destitute of all vegetation but the wild sage, and several va~ieties of the cacti. We shall not attempt any thirig like a full description of the plants or fio,vers, indigenous to the vicinity of the South Pass, on either side, but only speak of such as we saw and could make a note of, in the usual hurried passage of the emigrant along the great wagon trail. . But among the many beautiful flowers that we did 2 . . |