feet to six or eight hundred. At a distance, the granite frequently has
the appearance of irregular lumps of clay, hardened by exposure. A variety
of _asters_ may how be numbered among the characteristic plants, and
the artemisia continues in full glory; but _cacti_ have become rare,
and mosses begin to dispute the hills with them. The evening was damp and
unpleasant--the thermometer, at ten o'clock, being at 36 deg., and the grass
wet with a heavy dew. Our astronomical observations placed this encampment
in longitude 109 deg. 21' 32", and latitude 42 deg. 27' 15".

Early in the morning we resumed our journey, the weather, still cloudy,
with occasional rain. Our general course was west, as I had determined to
cross the dividing ridge by a bridle-path among the country more
immediately at the foot of the mountains, and return by the wagon road,
two and a half miles to the south of the point where the trail crosses.

About six miles from our encampment brought us to the summit. The ascent
had been so gradual, that, with all the intimate knowledge possessed by
Carson, who had made the country his home for seventeen years, we were
obliged to watch very closely to find the place at which we had reached
the culminating point. This was between two low hills, rising on either
hand fifty or sixty feet. When I looked back at them, from the foot of the
immediate slope on the western plain, their summits appeared to be about
one hundred and twenty feet above. From the impression on my mind at this
time, and subsequently on our return, I should compare the elevation which
we surmounted immediately at the Pass, to the ascent of the Capitol hill
from the avenue, at Washington. It is difficult for me to fix positively
the breadth of this Pass. From the broken ground where it commences, at
the foot of the Wind River chain, the view to the southeast is over a
champaign country, broken, at the distance of nineteen miles, by the Table
rock; which, with the other isolated hills in its vicinity, seem to stand