Timber also abounds in sufficient quantity for all necessary purposes Game too is found in great abundance, particularly deer and elk; and, taken as a whole, the vicinity of the Great Salt Lake holds out strong inducements to settlers, and is capable of sustaining, as it will no doubt ultimately possess, a dense population.
Forty or fifty miles west and south from this the traveller is inducted to the vast expanse of sand and gravel, lying between lat. 35° and 40° north, which is almost entirely destitute of both wood and water.
This reach is upwards of three hundred miles in length and nearly two hundred broad. It is impassable at all seasons of the year on account of its extreme dryness and lack of suitable nourishment for animals; and even a trip from Santa Fe to Western California, by the regular trail, is rarely undertaken except in the fall and spring months, at which time the ground is rendered moist by annual rains and the transient streams venture to emerge from their sandy hiding places.
The Digger country, of which I have taken occasion to speak in connection with its unfortunate inhabitants, lies upon the eastern and southern extremities of this desolate waste, and presents an aspect little less forbidding.
As a general thing the landscape is highly undulating and varied with conical hills, some of which are mere heaps of naked sand or sun-baked clay of a whitish hue; others, vast piles of granitic rock, alike destitute of vegetation or timber; while yet others are clothed with a scanty herbage and occasional clusters of stunted pines and cedars.
Now and then a diminutive vega intervenes in favorable contrast to the surrounding desolation, greeting the beholder with its rank grasses, mingled with blushing prairie-flowers. But such beauty-spots are by no means frequent.
The watercourses are mere beds of sand, skirted with sterile bottoms of stiff clay and gravel, and afford streams only at their heads, while, for nearly the entire year, both dew and rain are unknown. Vegetation, consequently, is sparse and unpromising, and the whole section of necessity remains depopulated of game.
It is needless to say such a country can never become inhabited by civilized man.
Between the Colorado river and the California mountains, south of the cheerless desert above described, the prospect is far more flattering. The hills are of varied altitude and are usually clothed with grass and timber; while comparatively few of them are denuded to any great extent. The landscape is highly picturesque and pleasingly diversified with mountains, hills, plains, and valleys, which afford every variety of climate and soil.
This section is principally watered by the Rio Virgen and lateral streams; and, though little or no rain falls in the summer months, the copiousness of nightly dews in some measure make up for this defect.
The superfice of the valleys ranges from one to three feet in depth, and generally consists of sedimentary deposites and the debris of rocks, borne from the neighboring hills by aqueous attrition, which, mingled with a dark-colored loam compounded of clay and sand, and various organic and vegetable remains, unite to form a soil of admirable fecundity, rarely equal led by that of any other country.
