The New York herald., 1874-10-01
Lieutenant WhecIer's Explorations.

AIeWtennnt WheeIer's Explorations.
While Professor Hayden and his corps of
colaborers for several years have been en-
gagged in unwilling the hitherto unexplored
and unknown wonders of the Rocky Noun
tains, from Colorado northward to the mar
vellous geysers, boiling springs and canyons
of the Yellowstone and those surrounding
groups of lofty mountains in Wyoming, Mon
tana and Idaho Territories, Lieutenant
Wheeler and his large and well equipped force
Of engineers, geologists, naturalists, botan-
lists, entomologists, &c., have been doing ex-
cellent service in their explorations of that
vast terra incognita embracing large portions
of Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and
Colorado, Of which regions, previous to these
explorations, very little was known. From
their researches in Western Colorado Lieuten-
ant Wheeler and his immediate party have
returned to Denver, with the report that, in
their value and importance, the general re-
suits of their recent expedition are far beyond
the work of previous years.
First, new pass has been discovered over
the backbone Of the Rocky Mountains, low
enough for a railway to the Gunnison Valley,
which is described as the richest region of the
Rocky Mountain range. Gunnison Valley is
watered by the South Branch of the Grand
River, and Grand and Green rivers at their
junction are merged in that wild and terrible
river, the Colorado of the West, whose o,itlet,
thousand miles below, is the Gulf of Cali
fornia. Fremont and Gunnison, in their off,
cial reports, as ''pathfnders, speak in rap
lures of the natural beauties of Colorado Ter
ritory west of the Rocky Mountain ''divide"-
o region of rich meadows, beautiful parks,
forests, fresh water lakes and perennial
streams. A feasible route for q railway to the
heart of this inviting region will doubtless
soon be followed by the building of the road
and the settlement Of the country.
Our despatch from Denver on Wheeler's dis
coveries next informed us that the finest collec-
ton of fossil remains ever found in America
had been secured by Professor Cope, paleon-
tologist Of the expedition that on the shore
Of an ancient ocean in New Mexico forty-seven
specimens were found in one day, and that the
megatherium, the mastodon, and all classes
of saurian monsters illustrating the animal life
of the saurian epoch are among these valuable
specimens. But the ocean here referred to
.must have been a fresh water lake, for those
animals, like the rhlnoceros and hippopota-
mus of the present day, were fresh water
creatures, and lived upon the vegetation of
fresh water lakes, rivers and swamps. In the
southeastern corner of California and extend
ing up into Nevada there is the bed of an
ancient inland sea or bay which in ancient
times was but an expansion and prolongation
of the present Gulf Of California For this
now dry desert basin Senator Jones, of Ne
vada, has secured survey, for the purpose of
ascertaining the cost Of reconverting it into an
inland sea by means of q canal to the Colo
RADIO River, only some fifty miles distant, the
feet below the sea-
The fossils OF this desert basin indicate
their salt water origin as distinctly as those Of
the ''great bone yards OF Nebraska, Dakota,
Wyoming and New Mexico indicate fresh
water habitat. Doubtless when the Colorado
desert was an arm of the sea immense areas
of the now elevated and arid plains east and
west OF the Rocky Mountains were fresh
water lakes swarming with the monstrous
aquatic animals of the saurian epoch. But
these recent explorations, in practical view,
have resulted in far more important discov-
cries than the fossil remains Of extinct ami
mails. They have greatly enlarged the area of
habitable and productive lands in our new
Territories beyond what it was supposed to
be- and have thus proportionately increased
our country's general resources Of wealth and
prosperity. A few years hence from these ex-
plorations the existing blanks on the maps of
the western division of the United States will
be filed up with the mountains, rivers, lakes,
and plans belonging to them, and not till
then shall we fully realize the grandeur and
the resources of our goodly inheritance.