[Gutenberg 42834] • The Red Track: A Story of Social Life in Mexico

The Rocky Mountains form an almost impassable barrier between California and the United States, properly so called; their formidable defiles, their rude valleys, and the vast western plains, watered by rapid streams, are even to the present day almost unknown to the American adventurers, and are rarely visited by the intrepid and daring Canadian trappers. The majestic mountain range called the Sierra of the Wind River, especially offers a grand and striking picture, as it raises to the skies its white and snow-clad peaks, which extend indefinitely in a north-western direction, until they appear on the horizon like a white cloud, although the experienced eye of the trapper recognizes in this cloud the scarped outline of the Yellowstone Mountains. The Sierra of the Wind River is one of the most remarkable of the Rocky Mountain range; it forms, so to speak, an immense plateau, thirty leagues long, by ten or twelve in width, commanded by scarped peaks, crowned with eternal snows, and having at their base narrow and deep valleys filled with springs, streams, and rock-bound lakes. These magnificent reservoirs give rise to some of the mighty rivers which, after running for hundreds of miles through a picturesque territory, become on one side the affluents of the Missouri, on the other of the Columbia, and bear the tribute of their waters to the two oceans.