Central route to the Pacific (Hardcover)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. KOUTE FROM HUERFANO RIVER TO COOCHATOPE PASS. June 3. Our camp the preceding night was a mile below the lower end of the canon through which the Huerfano forces a passage; this chasm is about ten miles in length, and the ground on each side is much cut up by deep and rocky ravines running into it. I rode up to its entrance to sketch; the scenery was wild and beautiful; wild turkeys flew away at my approach, and the startled deer rose from their beds in the grass at the bottom of the canon, making their escape up a ravine to the plain. A line of bluffs runs parallel to the Huerfano on the west from two to five miles distant, and wagons should travel at their base to avoid the broken ground nearer the stream; a thick growth of dwarf pines and cedars covers their summits. The wagon trail from the Greenhorn and Hardscrabble settlements on the upper Arkansas approaches the Huerfano below this canon, leaves it there, and returns to it above. After a ride of twenty-four miles up the left bank we encamped to noon on a gully where we found water in rocky hollows; the pasturage was excellent, as in fact it had been since reaching the Huerfano, for we had not seen better since leaving Council Grove. The scenery, as we approached the country between the Spanish Peaks and the Sierra Mojada, was picturesque and beautiful; mountains towered high above us, the summits of some covered with snow, while the dense forests of dark pines which clothed their sides, contrasted well with the light green of the meadows near their base. All day, heavy clouds had been gathering on the mountain-tops, portending a storm; at noon it broke, covering them with snow, and soon after swept over the plains. Here it rained in torrents, accompanied by a westerly wind, which blew with such fury as t...