t last it is!" muttered Seguin, with a singular expression of
countenance. "Oh, God be praised! Halt, comrades! halt!"

Our reins were tightened, and we sat on our weary horses looking over
the plain. A magnificent panorama, magnificent under any circumstances,
lay before us; but its interest was heightened by the peculiar
circumstances under which we viewed it.

We are at the western extremity of an oblong valley, looking up it
lengthwise. It is not a valley, though so called in the language of
Spanish America, but a plain walled in on all sides by mountains. It is
elliptical in form, the diameter of its foci being ten or twelve miles
in length. Its shortest diameter is five or six miles. It has the
surface of a green meadow, and its perfect level is unbroken by brake,
bush, or hillock. It looks like some quiet lake transformed into an
emerald.

It is bisected by a line of silvery brightness that curves gracefully
through its whole extent, marking the windings of a crystal stream.

But the mountains! What wild-looking mountains, particularly those on
the north side of the valley! They are granite upheaved. Nature must
have warred at the birth of these; the very sight of them suggests the
throes of a troubled planet. Huge rocks hang over, only half resting
upon fearful precipices; vast boulders that seem as though the touch of
a feather would cause them to topple down. Grim chasms open into deep,
dark defiles, that lie silent, and solemn, and frowning. Here and
there, stunted trees, the cedar and pinon, hang horizontally out,
clinging along the cliffs. The unsightly limbs of the cactus, and the
gloomy foliage of the creosote bush, grow together in seams of the
rocks, heightening their character of ruggedness and gloom. Such is the
southern barrier of the valley.

Look upon the northern sierra! Here is a contrast, a new geology. Not
a rock of granite meets the eye; but there are others piled as high, and
glistening with the whiteness of snow. These are mountains of the milky
quartz. They exhibit a variety of peaks, naked and shining; crags that
hang over deep, treeless ravines, and needle-shaped summits aspiring to
the sky. They too have their vegetation, a vegetation that suggests
ideas of the desert and desolation.

The two sierras appear to converge at the eastern end of the valley. We
are upon a transverse ridge that shuts it in upon the west, and from
this point we view the picture.

Wh