ing the summit in about an hour we saw below the shaggy foreground of evergreens, or rather ever-blacks, which cast grotesque and exaggerated shadows in the last rays of day, the snowy-white mountains, gloriously sunlit, on the far side of Shell Creek. Here for the first time appeared the piñon pine (P. Monophyllus), which forms the principal part of the Indian's diet; it was no beauty to look upon, a dwarfish tree, rendered shrub-like by being feathered down to the ground. The nut is ripe in early autumn, at which time the savages stow away their winter provision in dry ravines and pits. The fruit is about the size of a pistachio, with a decided flavor of turpentine, tolerably palatable, and at first laxative. The cones are thrown upon the fire, and when slightly burnt the nuts are easily extracted; these are eaten raw, or like the Hindoo's toasted grains. The harvest is said to fail every second year. Last season produced a fine crop, while in this autumn many of the trees were found, without apparent reason but frost, dead.
We resumed the descent along a fiumara, which presently "sank," and at 5 P.M. halted in a prairillon somewhat beyond. Bunch-grass, sage-fuel, and water were abundant, but the place was favorable for an attack. It is a golden rule in an Indian country never to pitch near trees or rocks that can mask an approach, and we were breaking it in a place of danger. However, the fire was extinguished early, so as to prevent its becoming a mark for Indians, and the pickets, placed on both sides of the ravine, were directed to lie motionless a little below the crest, and to fire at the first comer. I need hardly say we were not murdured; the cold, however, was uncommonly piercing.
We set out at 6 A.M. the next morning, through a mixture of snow and hail and howling wind, to finish the ravine, which was in toto eight miles long. The descent led us to Spring Valley, a bulge in the mountains about eight miles broad, which a sharp divide separates from Shell Valley, its neighbor. On the summit we fell into the line of rivulet which gives the low lands a name. At the foot of the descent we saw a woodman, and presently the station. Nothing could more want tidying than this log hut, which showed the bullet-marks of a recent Indian attack. The master was a Français de France, Constant Dubail, and an ex-Lancier: his mother's gossip had received a remittance of 2000 francs from a son in California, consequently he had torn himself from the sein of sa pauvre mère, and with three others had started in search of fortune, and had nearly starved. The express riders were three roughs, of whom one was a Mormon. We passed our time while the mules were at bait in visiting the springs. There is a cold creek 200 yards below the station, and close by the hut a warm rivulet, said to contain leeches. The American hirudo,
