regions of America. Though
new to my eyes, I recognised it from the descriptions I had read and
heard of it. There was an idiosyncrasy in its features--especially in
that lone mound rising conspicuously in its midst--which at once
proclaimed it the valley of the _Huerfano_. There stood the "Orphan
Butte." There was no mistaking its identity.

This valley, or, more properly, _valle_--a word of very different
signification--is in reality a level plain, flanked on each side by a
continuous line of bluffs or "benches"--themselves forming the abutments
of a still higher plain, which constitutes the general level of the
country. The width between the bluffs is five or six miles; but, at the
distance of some ten miles from our point of view, the cliffs converge--
apparently closing in the valley in that direction. This, however, is
only apparent. Above the butte is another deep canon, through which the
river has cleft its way. The intervening space is a picture fair to
behold. The surface, level as a billiard-table, is covered with
_gramma_ grass, of a bright, almost emerald verdure. The uniformity of
this colour is relieved by cotton-wood copses, whose foliage is but one
shade darker. Commingling with these, and again slightly darkening the
hue of the frondage, are other trees, with a variety of shrubs or
climbing-plants--as clematis, wild roses, and willows. Here and there,
a noble poplar stands apart--as if disdaining to associate with the more
lowly growth of the groves.

These "topes" are of varied forms: some rounded, some oval, and others
of more irregular shape. Many of them appear as if planted by the hands
of the landscape-gardener; while the Huerfano, winding through their
midst, could not have been more gracefully guided, had it been specially
designed for an "ornamental water."

The butte itself, rising in the centre of the plain, and towering nearly
two hundred feet above the general level, has all the semblance of an
artificial work--not of human hands, but a cairn constructed by giants.
Just such does it appear--a vast pyramidal cone, composed of huge
prismatic blocks of granite, black almost as a coal--the dark colour
being occasioned by an iron admixture in the rock. For two-thirds of
its slope, a thick growth of cedar covers the mound with a skirting of
darkest green. Above this appear the dark naked prisms--piled one upon
the other, in a sort of irregular crystallisation, and ending in a
s