of mica, of
great beauty and transparency, —one, in particular, was nearly a foot square, and two inches thick.
The only indication of minerals coming under my notice, was iron and salts; though gold has been found in the immediate vicinity of the Huaquetories, and silver ill the neighborhood of the de las Animas, —some very rich specimens of the latter ore, said to have been procured in this region having met my observation.
Near the Cimarone the country is very rugged and mountainous. Upon the right a lofty expanse of table land, some eight hundred or a thousand feet high, leads far off till it becomes lost in the distance; while, upon the left, the more elevated tierras templadas of the Colorado, gently curving from south to east, mark the division between the Cimarone and the latter stream.
Every watercourse is immured by cañons of craggy rocks that often preclude all access to it for many successive miles. The side-hills and prairie ridges, to some extent, are clothed with pines, pinion and cedars; and the creeks, whenever the narrow space of their prison-walls will permit it, afford beautiful groves of cottonwood and thick clusters of fruit-bearing shrubs and underbrush.
Our course for a number of miles, previous to descending to the valley of the Cimarone, lay at the base of the table mountain on the right.
The entrance to this valley was by a narrow buffalo trail, leading down a perpendicular wall of clay and rock, sidelong in a shelf-like path, barely wide enough for a single horse or man to advance carefully, as the least misstep might plunge him down the abyss to be dashed in pieces upon the sharp fragments detached from the overhanging cliffs.
The wall thus descended was from eight hundred to a thousand feet in altitude, and faced by another of equal height at a distance of twenty-five or thirty yards.
The spectacle was grand and awful beyond description. A rock, that broke loose about midway as we descended the pass, fell thundering down the frightful steep with a tremendous crash, and made the welkin ring as it reverberated along the vast enclosure with almost deafening clamor. I have witnessed many romantic and picturesque scenes, but never one so magnificently grand, so awe-inspiring in its sublimity, as that faintly delineated in the preceding sketch.
Entering the cañon at this point, after wandering a short distance among the huge masses of broken rock thrown from its towering sides, the traveller is ushered into a valley nearly a mile broad, shut in by mural mountains that rise to a varied height of from eight to fifteen hundred or two thousand feet, gradually expanding as he proceeds till it attains a width of from two to four miles.
This valley generally possesses a very rich soil, sometimes of a deep, gravelly mould, and almost of vermilion-like color, assimilating the famous redlands of
Texas, and, in appearance, equally fertile, —then, a dark brown loam obtrudes to view, sustaining a dense vegetation of lusty growth, and, yet again, a light sandy superstratum, affording but small indications of productiveness; or diminutive spreads of stiff clay, frowning in their own nudity; or barren wastes, of less extent, that, in deep penitence for their
