Follow me.

CHAPTER TWO.

THE WHITE PEAK.

Some years ago, I was one of a party of "prairie merchants," who crossed
with a caravan from Saint Louis on the Mississippi, to Santa Fe in New
Mexico. We followed the usual "Santa Fe trail." Not disposing of all
our goods in New Mexico, we kept on to the great town of Chihuahua,
which lies farther to the south. There we settled our business, and
were about to return to the United States the way we had come, when it
was proposed (as we had now nothing to encumber us but our bags of
money), that we should explore a new "trail" across the prairies. We
all wished to find a better route than the Santa Fe road; and we
expected that such an one lay between the town of El Paso--on the Del
Norte River--and some point on the frontiers of Arkansas.

On arriving at El Paso, we sold our wagons, and purchased Mexican
pack-mules--engaging, at the same time, a number of "arrieros," or
muleteers to manage them. We also purchased saddle-horses--the small
tight horses of New Mexico, which are excellent for journeying in the
Desert. We provided ourselves, moreover, with such articles of clothing
and provisions as we might require upon our unknown route. Having got
everything ready for the journey, we bade adieu to El Paso, and turned
our faces eastward. There were in all twelve of us--traders, and a
number of hunters, who had agreed to accompany us across the plains.
There was a miner, too, who belonged to a copper mine near El Paso.
There were also four Mexicans--the "arrieros" who had charge of our
little train of pack-mules. Of coarse, we were all well armed, and
mounted upon the best horses we could procure for money.

We had first to cross over the Rocky Mountains, which run north and
south through all the country. That chain of them which lies eastward
of El Paso is called the Sierra de Organos, or "Organ mountains." They
are so called from the fancied resemblance which is seen in one of their
cliffs to the tubes of an organ. These cliffs are of trap rock, which,
as you are aware, often presents very fantastic and singular formations,
by means of its peculiar stratification. But there is a still more
curious feature about these Organ mountains. On the top of one of them
is a lake, which has its tides that ebb and flow like the tides of the
ocean! No one has yet accounted for this remarkable phenomenon, and it
remains a puzzle to the geological inquirer. This lake i