The Colorado and its valley are before us!

Magnificent !

The Great Moss Lode

Far below where we stand flows the river ; two hundred and fifty miles from its mouth at the top of the Gulf of California ; sixty miles below the termination of its wonderful canon, the Canon Grande of the Colorado-.- profoundest, most stupendous, longest chasm in the world ; and seven hundred miles from its sources in the Rocky Mountains.

Looking across, our view is limited by the crests of what appears to be a range of mountains bounding the Colorado Valley on the other side of the river, but which really is the scarp and glacis to the table-lands of Central Arizona, and piercing through it for several miles, the " croppings " of the Great Moss Lode are traceable.

The Great Moss Lode is a gold-bearing quartz vein, and its outcroppings are larger, and have been traced farther, than those of any other lode yet discovered. It has been mined in many places, both by American and Mexican companies ; sometimes to great loss and disappointment ; at others, yielding to the adventurers large quantities of gold, from rich chimneys and pockets. But the difficulty, almost amounting to impossibility, of keeping a working party in such a country supplied with food and other necessaries ; the scarcity of water near the lode ; the total absence of timber ; the uncertainty and cost of labour; and, worse than all these obstacles taken together, the ''Indian difficulty," have caused all mining operations on it to be suspended sine die.

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