The hills, however, are unfit for cultivation to any great extent, owing to their common sterility as well as the abundance of rock in many parts; yet they might serve a good purpose for grazing lands.
The prevailing rock is said to be sandstone, limestone, mica slate, trap, and basalt; the minerals, copper, iron, coal, salt, and sulphur.
Game exists in great abundance, among which are included antelope, deer, (black and white-tailed,) elk, bear, and immense quantities of waterfowls; large herds of wild horses and cattle, also, are not unfrequently met with.
Timber is usually a scarce article, which constitutes one grand fault in the entire section of Eastern California. This evil, however, is partially remedied by a mild climate, and only a comparatively small amount of wood is required for building, fencing, and fuel.
Fruits of all kinds indigenous to the country, particularly grapes, are found in great profusion, and those native only to the torrid and temperate zones may also be successfully cultivated.
Among the grasses, grains, and vegetables growing spontaneously in some parts, are red-clover and oats, (which attain a most luxuriant bulk,) flax and onions; the latter not unfrequently equalling in size the proudest products of the far-farmed gardens of Wethersfield.
We are now naturally led back to the Colorado, and the country lying between it and the Sierra de los Mimbros range, on the east. This division embraces much
choice land in its valleys, but the high grounds and hills present much of the dryness and sterility incident to the grand prairies.
The valley of the Colorado averages from five to fifteen miles broad, for a distance of nearly two hundred miles above its mouth.
Further on, the passage of the river through high mountains and tierras templadas (table lands) presents an almost continuous gorge of vertical and overhanging rocks, that, closing in upon the subfluent stream at a varied height of from fifteen to six hundred or even a thousand feet, afford only an occasional diminutive opening to its waters.
This vast cañon is said to extend for five or six hundred miles, interrupting the river with numerous cataracts, cascades and rapids, and opposing to its swift current the sharp fragments of severed rocks thrown from the dizzy eminences, as breakers, by which to lash the gurgling waters and depict the more than tempest-tossed foam and maddened fury of old ocean!
In some places the impending rocks approach so near to each other from above, a person may almost step across the vast chasm opening to view the foaming river, half obscured in perpendicular distance and dimmed by the eternal shadows of thrice vertical walls.
This superbly magnificent scene continues nearly the entire extent, from the head of the Colorado valley to the boundary between Oregon and California.
The table lands and mountains on both sides, as a whole, disclose a dreary prospect. Now, the traveller meets with a wide reach of naked rock paving the surface to the exclusion of grass, shrubs, or tree, —now, a narrow fissure, filled with detritus and earth, sustains a few stunted pines, now, a spread of hard sun-baked clay refuses root to aught earth-growing, now, a small space of saline efflorescences obtrudes upon the vision its snowy incrustations, alike repulsive to vegetable life — then, comes a broad
