Our road rapidly ascended from here to the higher mountains, and became daily steeper and poorer in vegetation; still the path we followed was very fair, so that we rather rapidly surmounted the heights, on whose small plateaus our cattle were able to rest again. We left behind us in a few days many mountain chains with their narrow valleys, when suddenly the mountains before us became covered with snow, and we were soon in the wintry landscape again. We suffered terribly from the cold, as our clothes were not at all suited for such a temperature; and though we wrapped ourselves in our skins we could not keep warm. I was the best protected, as I hung my large bearskin over me, and, sitting upon it, wrapped myself up from head to foot; but for all that I did not get warm during the ride, and we were very glad when we reached a hollow in the evening, where we found but little snow and a clump of fir-trees, in which we camped, and warmed the atmosphere around us with an enormous fire. On the following day our road ran principally over snow-covered rocks, but we came now and then to spots where the sun had melted it, while all around us rose mountains which even at midsummer do not doff their winter garment. At last, early one morning, after spending the night at a very poor fire, we ascended a saddle, whence we looked down into a plain, whose end in the blue misty distance was bordered by high mountains, while on the west and east it was begirt by immense ranges, whose lower chains ran down sharply on both sides in the most remarkable shapes. The steepest rocks here rose precipitously over the valley, and the white stone formed long pinnacles, round domes, globes resting on their pillars, in a word, the strangest shapes, so that our wondering eyes were tempted to see in them towers, castles, and monuments, while farther on the mountain masses rose above each other with a reddish-blue tinge, and touched the clouds with a few isolated peaks. The valley itself, if it may be called so at this elevation, was well watered, and from south to north glistened at the base of the western mountains the surface of a large river, while on the right-hand side signs of water were also visible. Except the forest of pines on the sides of the mountains, vegetation seemed to be restricted to the vicinity of this water, where we noticed a good deal of bush and some rather lofty trees of the aspen and poplar kind. The greater portion of this extensive undulating plain only displayed desolate tracts of stone and rocky knolls. Our Indians call this mountain glen Old Park, and the river before us the sources of the Rio Colorado, which flows through New Mexico and California to the distant Pacific, where it falls into the Gulf of California.