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Show 101 age area of the Hermosa to the eastward. Above the mouth of Cascade Creek the country is very rugged, and broken by the deep- cut valleys and steep ridges between of the streams draining the southern side of the Animas rim. This entire section below high- timber line is covered with fallen timber and many little bogs and springs, which, in addition to steep grades, make the trails over the high passes at the heads of Cascade and Lime Creeks difficult and unsatisfactory. Trails of this character, steep, boggy, and obstructed with logs, lead over the heads of Cascade Creek to the Dolores and to the south fork of Mineral Creek, and over the head of Lime Creek to Baker's Park. The mountains in the angle between Cascade Creek and the Animas are of meta-morphic rocks, quarizite, and farther west and north on the southern slopes of the rim are trachytio, overlying extensive exposures of the limestones and sandstones of the Carboniferous series; which latter give, by their worn and exposed faces and small dip, mesa- like bunches or berms at the bases of many of the trachy tic slopes, notably near the headwaters of Cascade Creek and at Engineer Peak, ascended and described by Lieutenant Ruifner's party in 1873. * South of Cascade Creek the rolling floor of the bench or plateau valley cut through by the Animas, along its eastern edge is heavily grassed, and quite well watered by streams flowing from cliffs in the sandstone bluffs bordering it to the west, and by lagoons and lakes on its surface near the river. It is about 8,600 feet in altitude, and is a fine summer range for a small herd of cattle. At Animas City the river emerges from the low walls of its canon, and the valley opens out a short distance below to a width of from one- half to 1 mile and extends for 10 or 12 miles, ( within the area purchased from the Utes,) its nearly flat surface broken in one or two places bv low, rounded hills rising, perhaps, 25 to 50 feet above the surface of the valley. In this park or valley very fine crops ot corn, wheat, oaus, and barley were raised last year, and all of the usual products of the vegetable garden were growing to perfection. Up to the 1st of October, as I am informed, there had been no frost, which the green tops of growing plants further attested. Potatoes grow to great size; single bulbs weighing two pounds or more each were in several instances found among the few purchased for the use of the party, and were of fine flavor and texture, solid throughout. These were said to have been grown from the miserable little refuse bulbs obtained at Tierra Ama-rilla, N. Mex. The Animas River is here about 100 feet in width and 3 feet deep, of sluggish flow, arid very tortuous; bordered near the center of the valley with soft banks of alluvium, and in places in its bed obstructed with quicksands. Fords, however, are found at several places in the valley where rapids occur. Junction and Hermosa Creeks furnish sufficient water to irrigate the western side of the valley, and the eastern can be irrigated by a ditch starting below Animas City, where the banks of the stream are not t o o high. There are probably, in all, beeween 3,000 and 4,000 acres of arable land of fine quality in the Animas Valley, north of the boundary of the Ute reservation, varying in altitude from 6,400 to 6,800 feet. All of the desirable ranches have been home-steaded, and will, it is expected by the owners, prove sources of wealth more certain than the silver lodes which attract their customers to the mines above. Old Auimas City is situated on a low bunch of gravel overgrown bv quite a forest of large yellow pines. Elsewhere, near the valley, there is abundant timber and fuel. J oat below old Animas City, which, by the way, is not inhabited, are several springs of carbonated water impregnated with soda- salts and with sulphur, and of quite pleasa n t taste. The temperature of one was taken, and fouud to be 107°. 3 Fahrenheit. They have formed a dirty ocherish yellow deposit about them. The Needles or Quartzite Crags. Bast of the great cafion of the Animas and south of the headwaters of the Rio Grande, about the headwaters of the Rio Los Pinos and Florida, is a group of crags of quartzite rocks, reaching to an altitude above sea- level of 14,000 feet. The forms of these crags are so unusual in the mountains of Colorado, and especially here where rounded sum-xnita and large masses with sweeping curves and outlines are so frequent, that they deserve mention, although the area covered by them is very small, and in all probability is forever useless, unless unexpectedly mines of silver or gold are found. Amoug these there are no slopes covered with grass, no valleys, scarcely foothold for pines on their slopes, b u t everywhere thin crags and slabs with knife- edge or saw- teeth summits, as a rule wholly inaccessible, pierce the clouds, encircling like a crown the heads of the western tributary of the Rio Los Pinos and short tributaries of the Animas above Cascade Creek. Ho where in Colorado can be found such steep slopes, such shapeless crags, such, rocky a n d impassable ravines, such generally detestable characteristics and features as are here seen. The hard metamorphic rocks are shivered along their cleavage planes for hundreds o f feet, leaving here odd pinnacles, there the likeness of the shattered outspread wings o f some gigantic bird, and again of the grim grinning teeth of Death. AP. JJ- 7 |