If the reader will look over the map I have sketched of the Shoshone country, he will perceive how well the land is watered; the lakes are all transparent and deep, the rivers run upon a rocky bottom as well as all the brooks and creeks, the waters of which are always cool and plentiful.  One more observation to convince the reader of the superiority of the clime is, that, except a few ants in the forest, there are no insects whatever to be found.  No mosquitoes, no prairie horse-flies, no beetles, except the ceconilla or large phosphoric fly of California, and but very few worms and caterpillars; the consequence is, that there are but two or three classes of the smaller species of carnivorous birds; the large ones, such as the common and red-headed vulture and crow, are very convenient, fulfilling the office of general scavengers in the prairies, where every year thousands of wild cattle die, either from fighting, or, when in the central deserts, from the want of water.  On the western coast, the aspect of the country, in general, is gently diversified; the monotony of the prairies in the interior being broken by islands of fine timber, and now and then by mountains projecting boldly from their bases.  Near the sea-shore the plains are intersected by various ridges of mountains, giving birth to thousands of small rapid streams, which carry their cool and limpid waters to the many tributaries of the sea, which are very numerous between the mouth of the Calumet and Buonaventura.  Near to the coast lies a belt of lofty pines and shady odoriferous magnolias, which extends in some places to the very beach and upon the high cliffs, under which the shore is so bold that the largest man-of-war could sail without danger.  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.