I remember to have once seen, above the bay of San
Francisco, the sailors of a Mexican brig sitting on the ends of their
topsail yards, and picking the flowers from the branches of the trees as
they glided by.
In that part of the country, which is intersected by mountains, the soil
is almost everywhere mineral, while the mountains themselves contain
rich mines of copper. I know of beds of gallena extending for more than
a hundred miles; and, in some tracts, magnesian earths cover an immense
portion of the higher ridges. Most of the sandy streams of the Shoshone
territory contain a great deal of gold-dust, which the Indians collect
twice a year and exchange away with the Mexicans, and also with the
Arrapahoes.
The principal streams containing gold are tributaries to the
Buonaventura, but there are many others emptying into small lakes of
volcanic formation. The mountains in the neighbourhood of the Colorado
of the West, and in the very country of the Arrapahoes, are full of
silver, and perhaps no people in the world can show a greater profusion
of this bright metal than these Indians.
The Shoshone territory is of modern formation, at least in comparison
with the more southern countries where the Cordillieres and the Andes
project to the very shores of the ocean.
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