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Show CAJON PASS TN THE SIEEEA NEVADA. 239 55°, and delightful weather. After an early breakfast, we rode through a beautiful grove of cottonwood, with willow undergrowth. Rose trees in full bloom, with hundreds of other beautiful flowers. This is a fairy land, indeed. What a contrast to the desert of a few hours ago! Grape vines hang gracefully from the branches of lofty trees, -while the air resounds with the songs of birds. I noticed numbers of doves, a species of quail with a topknot (the California quail), herons, and ducks in great numbers on the river. We crossed the river, which at this place was a running stream, about two hundred yards wide, and fringed with cottonwood and willow trees. After leaving the river, we commenced to ascend gradually to another desert, of seventeen miles. The last five miles was through a forest of muskale (Agave Americana), which grow to an immense size ; some as large as the greatest oak tree I ever saw. This is a curious tree, the trunk is cylindrical, as if it were turned ; its limbs are leafless, except at their extremities, on which grow long narrow leaves, with a sharp prickle at the end. These trees assume the most fantastic forms. At noon we arrived at the summit of the Cajon Pass, in the Sierra Nevada the descent from which is on a saddle or spur of the mountain, on an angle of thirty-five degrees, and the length of the descent is a quarter of a mile, then it becomes more gradual for a mile, until you reach the valley below. The view from the top of the pass, is grand beyond description-from it, you can see the San Bernandino Mountains, and numberless valleys; from this eminence the Tulara Pass is in view. The descent of our wagons occupied considerable |