Litchfield enquirer., 1859-08-04

could Cor would) afford me shelter on any terms, so l made Q virtue of necessity, and ap- piled to Captain Clark, who at once assigned me room-there being few troops at this post at prescnt-aud for the five days | re- mained there, l slept between 4oor and roof, after five weeks experience of the more primitive methods of keeping cold and storm at bay was treated with more than hospi- tality-wth generous kindness-hy Captain Clark, Lieutenants Haskell and Follett, and Doctor Johns-and yet the long tarry became at length irksome, because had already lost too much time, and was most anxious to be moving westward. Finally, the maiistage from the East hove in sight on the morning of June 30, but halted just across Laramie Riv-
 CT all day, repairing coach, and it was eight
 o'clock in the afternoon when it startcd-1 alone perched on the summit of its seventeen
 mal.bags as passenger-he who had thus far
 filled that exalted post kindly giving way for
 wagon that was to follow next morning. We
 forded the swollen Laramie two miles %bove
 the Fort, in the last vestiges of twilight-had the usual trouble with mules turning about in md-stream, tangliHg up the team and threat ening to upset the wagon-bnt overcame it after while, got safely out, drove on fifteen
 miles to Warm Spring-a fountain which
 throws out half water enough for a grist-mill, all which is drank up by the thirsty sands
 through which it takes its course before it can
 reach the Platte, only three or four miles dis
 tant We campcd here till daylight, then
 lost two hours in hunting up our mules. which had been simply tied in pairs. and allowed to 20 in quest of the scanty grass of that region.
 They were found at last, and we went on our way rejoicing.
 1 shall not weary my readers with ionrnal of our travels for the last four days. Hither- to, since left civilized Kansas, I had trav- ersed routes either newly opened or scarcely known to the mass of readers but from Lar annie have followed the regular California and Oregon Overland Trail, already many times described, and by this time familiar to hundreds of thousands Suffice it that, for over two hundred miles from Laramie, it trav- erses region substantially described in my notes of journey from tine Buffalo range to Denver, and from Denver to Laramie, re. gion for the most part, rainl,ss in summer and autumn, yet one whose soil of more or less sandy clay, lacking support from ridges of un- dcrlying rock, has been more scanned, and gongcd, ard gullied, and washed away, by the action of floods and streams than any other on rarth-a region of bluffs, aud buttes, and deep ravines, and intervaIes, and shallow aka
 line lakcets, now mainly dried up, and streams running milky, even when low, with the clay guied from their banks and sent of to render the bottoms of the lower Mississippi. Occa- sionally, but not so frequently as south of Laramie, the clay hills hardened into rock by some alchemy of Nature, present the perpcr- dicular fronts and rninous-castle aspects al- ready described-in a few instances, the scan- ty creeks which make their way from the mountains to the North Platte or the Sweet water run through narrow canons of such rock but usually each creek has washed out for itself 8 wide valley, and the bluffs or buttes where they exist, are distant many miles on one side if not on both In few places, the mountains are so near that their thinly sattcr- ed, stunted, scraggy Yellow Pines are plainly seen--are even close beside us but usually the prospect is composed of rolling prairie very scantily grassed and often thickly cover ed for miles on miles by the everlasting Sage bush of this desolate region. This is not an anomaly as might be supposcd-the stem lives for years, perhaps centuries, though the shoots and leaves die every autumn. Another slrnb, less common, but which often thickly covers hundreds of acres, is the Greasewood--a low, prickly bush, growing in punches like the Sage bush, and looking like bad imitation of the English privet Beside these two miserable shrubs, the dry land, other than the moun- tains, for hundreds of miles, produc cs a very Iif flo hun n many ilfavored weeds of no known or pre- sumed value. Of wood, the Platte and it's more easterly tributaries have at intervals shred of the eternal Cottonwood of the Plains, much of it the more scrubby and worthless species known as bitter Cottonwood, with a very little of the equally worthless Box FL dcr--aud that is all. But, l4O miles this side of Laramie, We leave the Platte, which here comes from the South, and strike nearly forty miles across barren divide to it's tributary, the Swectwatcr, which we find just by Inde- pendence Rock, quite landmark in this deso- late region, with several low mountains of al- most naked rock around it, having barely soil enough in their crevices to support a few dwar- fish Pines. Five miles above this is the Dev- il's Gate---a passage of the Swectwater thro perpendicular canon some 25 feet wide and said to be six hundred feet high-a passage which must have been cut while the rock was still clay. Here a large party of Mormons were caught by the snows of Winter while on their way to Salt Lake some years since, and compelled to encamp for the Winter, so scan- tily provided that more than hundred of them died of hunger and hardship before Spring. And here is a fountain of cold Wa tcr-tha frSt thai had Snpn fnr more tha q hundred miles, though there is another on the long stretch from the Platte to the Sweetwa- ter which is said to be good, but a drove of cattle were making quite too free with it when We passed. Here the weary crowds of eni- grants to California were to gather yesterday for a celebration of the "Gierious" Fourth,
 l. T | .