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Show 50 RECONNAISSANCE IN'THE UTE COUNTRY. little stock runs in these hills, and an occasional cabin is found ia the gulches. Beyond a brook known as Oak- Grove Creek, distant about four miles from Camp 31, we rose to a mesa sloping from the mountain to the junction of Texas Creek and the Arkansas. This mesa was cut by shallow gulches, and afforded grass for some stock, little, however, back toward the mountain. This mesa was beautiful with yellow and scarlet autumn foliage on sunny slopes, but these slopes are,' doubtless, rugged and barren. From this mesa we turned left, leaving the upper end of Wet Mountain Valley on our right, one or two miles away, and descended to the gulch of Texas Creek. The mouth of Wet Mountain Valley is one or two miles wide across from hills east of Texas Creek to Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Texas is a creek of 30 to 50 feet wide, clear and swift. There is a large saw- mill where the road strikes it, and a ranche ( Lamb's) half a mile below, at which place we made Camp 3U, in poor grass. From Camp 32 our course lay up a dry gulch winding up through the rough hills, which seem to lie between Wet Mountain Valley and the liver, passing out, in about three miles on, to a flat mesa country with gravely surface aud cut by deep gulches. Kept this for six miles, when we entered Webster Caiion, a steep, narrow gulch of granite and trap, very rough and having a dry stream- bed. In the cailon were seen wild hops, clematis, choke- cherries, currants, some scrub- oak and long- leaved pine. About a mile and three- quarters above Camp 33 the canon is contracted, forming Jenkins's Gate, a cleft through a spur of rock which once closed the valley. Here the opening is about 150 feet wide at top and 50 feet high; walls vertical. From Jenkins's Gate to Camp 33 the canon is nearly a box one. Camp 33 was made at a point where the walls of the cailon fell back and opened out as steep rounded ranges, in which a little poor grass was found for our stock. From this camp our road was up a branch of the canon, which, in about four miles, brought us out on a high waterless broken mesa, sloping from the Greenhorn range toward the Arkansas. In the canon, by which we rose to this mesa, we saw the round- leafed cotton- wood of the Missouri Valley, tall cacti, and oaks about 25 to 30 feet high. The road was over the mesa country in a nearly due north course for about four miles, when we reached the Arkansas at a point where its caiion breaks down the road, here crossing to the left bank by an excellent truss bridge, near which we made Camp 34. Near to this camp, on the slope in a bend on the right bank, was a well- improved farm, at which we were able to purchase much needed fodder for our stock. In the hills near the bridge and in the caiiou below strata of very white saudstone are exposed. We crossed the river at Camp 34, and passed up a steep narrow gulch out on to a mesa extending from the spur, at the extremity of which is Pike's Peak, to the canon of the Arkansas. About five miles above Caiion City, the road enters a shallow, wide, flat- bottomed gulch, close to a range forming the north boundary of the mesa, in which is a stream. The sides of this gulch expose deep ledges of limestone, one to two hundred feet thick, having an easterly dip of about 10°. At a point about four miles above Canon City, the sides come close together, forming a box caiion about 50 feet deep and 400 or 500 feet long. We followed this gulch dowrn to the Arkansas at its exit from the canon about a mile above Canon City, making Camp 35 on the bank of the river. From Caiion City there is a macadamized road, and graded road- bed for railroad, down the valley to Lebran, where the Denver and Eio Grande |