WCP455

[1]

Stranded in the Desert of the Upper Colorado, on boundary of Colorado and Utah. Friday July 15th. 1887. noon. —¹

My dear Mitten²

Coming luxuriously along in a sleeping car from Ogden toward Denver & having passed some magnificent rock scenery and some perfect gardens of flowers which I linger to stay an hour among, we came to some low valleys where the rain we had had slightly in the afternoon had been so great as the to flood the country, and further on we were brought to a stop by the news that the line had been washed away ahead of us. During the night this had been repaired, though it was a gap on a high embankment & in the morning we were 9 hours behind time. We then stopped at a small station — appropriately named "Excelsior"— with the news of 3 more washouts ahead of us. and here we have been since 8 o’clock. The spot is a dreary waste of bare soil thickly clotted with Artemisia, Greaswood (a shrubby Chenopod) & a few Polygonaceae & Chenopodiaceae, with my old friend Malvastrum coccineum and dwarf sunflowers for the only flowering plants. I wandered about about a mile but found nothing else though there were signs of a good many plants, mostly animals, [2] which had been in flower in the Spring. Finding a few patches mosses growing among the roots of the Artemisias, & on a few humps of earth & rock I gathered bits of each sort I could find thinking that, as probably no human being ever gathered mosses in so unlikely a place before they ought to be something rare, though I should not be greatly surprised if they are all common English mosses. Such rainstorms & washouts as this occur nearly every year once or twice, and it has been our luck to hit upon it. Had we come on it without warning we might have had a serious accident & in fact we did cross some holes where the strength of the rails was our only support. As we are now all thrown out of time I shall probably stop somewhere in order not to pass the fine scenery I have come this road to see, in the night. If all goes right I hope next week to be among the snows and alpine plants of Gray’s Peak, almost the highest in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. I have suffered much from inflamed eyes due to glare heat & dust but otherwise I am in excellent health. We are moving (1pm)!

Adieu! | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]