ming our course, soon emerged from the hilly labyrinth on a
series of terraces, falling off like steps to the river on our left.
They had been burned over, and the young grass was sprouting up,
under the freshening influence of the early rain, in a carpet of
translucent green. At a distance of four leagues from San Juan, after
descending from terrace to terrace, we again reached the river, now
flowing through a valley three hundred yards broad, and about fifty
feet below the general level of the adjacent _plateau_. Here we found
another fork in the stream: the principal body of water descending,
as before, from the right, and called Rio Rancho Grande; the smaller
stream, on the left, bearing the name of Rio Chaguiton; and the two
forming the Rio Goascoran. Half a mile beyond the ford is a
collection of three or four huts, called Rancho Grande. Here we
stopped to determine our position. We were now at the foot of the
"divide," and close to the pass, if such existed, of which we were in
search. Immediately in front rose a high peak, destitute of trees,
which the people called _El Volcan_. It had deep breaks or valleys on
either side, evidently those of the streams to which I have alluded.
Outside of these, the mountains, six or eight thousand feet in
height, swept round in a majestic curve. Were there, then, two passes
through the Cordilleras, separated by the conical peak of El Volcan?
or did the great valley of the Goascoran divide here, only to waste
itself away in narrow gorges, leaving a summit too high to be
traversed except by mountain mules?

Strange to say, the occupants of the huts at Rancho Grande could give
us no information on these points, but to all our inquiries only
answered, _"Quien sabe?"_ (Who knows?)--and pointed out to us the
line of the mule-path, winding over the intervening hills and along
the flank of El Volcan. Up to this time we had had comparatively
small experience, and did not quite understand, what we afterwards
came to know too well, that a Spanish road is perfect only when it
runs over the highest and roughest ground that by any possibility may
be selected between two given points.

We did not waste much time with the people of Rancho Grande, but
urged on our mules as rapidly as possible. Turning abruptly to the
right and leaving the _plateau_ behind us, we advanced straight up
the high ridge intervening between the two valleys, and thence in a
zigzag course to the foot of El Volcan, a