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Show 18 Eio Grande from the westward, and in their course, before debouching from the foot- hills, pass through a succession of parks and glades, ( see Plate I,) limited on either sitle by canon- walls often 700 and 800 feet in height, and defiles within these walls through which the streams wind with rapid currents. The great variety of landscape, comprising forest- trees, shrubs, grasses, ( delightfully green in contrast with the ashen- brown of the valley below,) lakelets, and springs, each affording a pleasing contrast to the eye, and anticipations for a campaign in which some. of the esthetic accompaniments of camp- life, in contradistinction to the desert, might reasonably be expected. However different the sequel that brought several comparatively sleepless nights on the greensward, with only the heavens for a covering, while the train with all its comforts seemed far away, may have been, I shall not soon forget the grandeur of the view from Prospect Peak, the first marked point of the foot- hills west from Conejos, that afforded a horizon made up of extended valleys and massive mountains on the one side, while to the westward, in the line of our route, lay the cragged summits of the San Juan range, and, in intervening vistas, a succession of forest, stream, and valley, most inviting. The San Antonio Creek is a tributary of the Conejos from the south,, while the La Jara, less important than either the Conejos or Alamoza, joins the Eio Grande between them. It was at the junction of the San Antonio and Conejos that Lieutenant ( afterward General) Pike, while exploring for the source of the Eed Eiver, was captured by Mexican troops in 1807 and taken to Mexico. The remnants of a stockade erected as a protection against the Indians yet remain, and I was informed by credible authority that a peg bearing his name had been discovered near the source of Sangre de Cristo Creek, indicating that he entered the Eio Grande from the Arkansas, either by way of the Sangre de Cristo or Abeyta Pass, names unknown to the map of his route. If we have a right to apply the term " park* to a series of natural objects picturesquely grouped in areas of considerable extent, and the right is exercised in the western mountain- region entered by the survey under my charge, after according the palm to the little valleys of drainage of the Upper Colorado Chiquito and the heads of Salt Eiver, explored in 1873, my mind turns next to those situated among the foot- hills west of the central part of San Luis Valley, and in the valley of the Upper San Juan, where nature has accomplished on a grand scale a harmony that art could not improve, and the freshness and purity of which it might desecrate. The timber noted has been principally pine and aspen, the former predominating. The highest peaks of the San Juan are bare, but the higher foothills and the mesa headlands standing out in the southern horizon, and the high mountains encircling the head of the San Juan, are plentifully supplied, as well as large areas along the creeks that enter the San Juan from the north as far west as Las Animas Eiver. The nutritious bunch- grass of the entire mountain- region, as yet unharmed by the tramp of sheep that, lower down the Eio Grande, have worn out parts of the ranges upon which they feed, is valuable to the prospector or future settler. Evidences of large and small game have been plentiful, but no time could be devoted to hunting. Occasional messes of fine niountain- trout gave evidence of their plentifnlness. The divide between the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific was found |