discovery of these always brought pleasure to the camp, as around them
were generally green flats, which afforded abundant pasturage for our
animals; and here we usually collected herds of the buffalo, which now
were scattered over all the country in countless numbers.

The soil of bare and hot sands supported a varied and exuberant growth of
plants, which were much farther advanced than we had previously found
them, and whose showy bloom somewhat relieved the appearance of general
sterility. Crossing the summit of an elevated and continuous range of
rolling hills, on the afternoon of the 30th of June, we found ourselves
overlooking a broad and misty valley, where, about ten miles distant, and
1,000 feet below us, the South fork of the Platte was rolling
magnificently along, swollen with the waters of the melting snows. It was
in strong and refreshing contrast with the parched country from which we
had just issued; and when, at night, the broad expanse of water grew
indistinct, it almost seemed that we had pitched our tents on the shore of
the sea.



JULY.


Traveling along up the valley of the river, here 4,000 feet above the sea,
in the afternoon of July 1, we caught a far and uncertain view of a faint
blue mass in the west, as the sun sank behind it; and from our camp in the
morning, at the mouth of Bijou, Long's peak and the neighboring mountains
stood out into the sky, grand and luminously white, covered to their bases
with glittering snow.