ascinated
as he becomes by the beauty as well as by the novelty of the landscape,
while running parallel with the great Sierra Madre, after he has
traversed the Ratonis at daybreak,--enters a still more weird country in
the afternoon. The Rio Pecos is crossed just beyond Bernal, and thence
on he speeds towards the west and north: to the left, the towering Mesa
de Pecos, dark pines clambering up its steep sides; to the right, the
broad valley, scooped out, so to say, between the _mesa_ and the
Tecolote ridge. It is dotted with green patches and black clusters of
cedar and pine shooting out of the red and rocky soil. Scarcely a house
is visible, for the _casitas_ of adobe and wood nestle mostly in
sheltered nooks. Beyond Baughl's, the ruins first strike his view; the
red walls of the church stand boldly out on the barren _mesilla_; and to
the north of it there are two low brown ridges, the remnants of the
Indian houses. The bleak summits of the high northern chain seem to rise
in height as he advances; even the distant Trout mountains (Sierra de la
Trucha) loom up solemnly towards the head-waters of the Pecos. About
Glorieta the vale disappears, and through the shaggy crests of the Canon
del Apache, which overlooks the track in awful proximity, he sallies out
upon the central plain of northern New Mexico, six thousand eight
hundred feet above the sea-level. To the south-west the picturesque
Sandia mountains;[90] to the west, far off, the Heights of Jemez and the
Sierra del Valle, bound the level and apparently barren table-land. An
hour more of fearfully rapid transit with astonishing curves, and, at
sunset, he lands at La Villa Real de Santa-Fe.

Starting back from Santa Fe towards Pecos on a dry, sandy wagon-road, we
lose sight of the table-land and its environing mountain-chain, when
turning into the ridges east of Manzanares. Vegetation, which has been
remarkably stunted until now, improves in appearance. However rocky the
slopes are, tall pines grow on them sparsely: the Encina appears in
thickets; _Opuntia arborescens_ bristles dangerously as a large shrub;
mammillary cactuses hide in the sand; even an occasional patch of Indian
corn is found in the valleys. It is stunted in growth,[91] flowering as
late as the last days of the month of August, and poorly cultivated. The
few adobe buildings are mostly recent. Over a high granitic ridge, grown
over with _pinon_ (all the trees inclined towards the north-east by the
fi