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Rh also, be of the utmost importance to emigrants who may be overtaken by the rainy season, as it is seldom, if ever, obstructed by the snows, which immediately after the commencement of the rains, cover all the mountains, blocking up every other way to such a degree that it is extremely hazardous to attempt them.

This little Valley of verdure and flowers looks out from its Eastern extremity upon an arid desert over which, in the vast scope which the eye embraces, nothing presents save huge piles and masses of dark rock and thirsty sands. In this region, so wonderful and so unlike any other portion of the known world, even the foot prints of the bold trapper have seldom disturbed the inhospitable sands, There are a few tracks in the vast region which lies between the California and Rocky Mountains, traveled at times by the Trappers and by the Mexican Traders, but these are rare: between them are extensive spaces which have never been trodden by the foot of civilized man. Previously this had been marked on the otherwise very imperfect and incorrect maps which have been made of the countries West of the Rocky Mountains "the unexplored region." It was left a perfect blank, and it is strange that in this very acknowledgment of their ignorance the map-makers have described so accurately what succeeding explorations have proved to be a perfect blank. It is reasonable to suppose that the All-Wise has arranged every thing in nature with perfect fitness; that there is nothing in the great globe which is not perfectly adapted to some proper purpose, which is not a necessary part in this vast, harmonious machine—the Universe of God. But, as far as the eye of man, though aided by all his philosophy, has yet been able to see; the half of all is unaccountable. So is this seeming waste. It appears to have been thrown in merely to fill up space, or to be a barrier to the commerce and