rana, the
Cuirana held something in store for him, and Zashue did not care to
start without his brother. And when all that was finished the old man
was not ready; and so they are waiting and waiting, and autumn is here
in all its beauty, and Hayoue and Zashue, Zashue as well as Hayoue,
begin to chafe; but it is of no avail; they must wait.

While they are thus waiting until it pleases their friend to start, we
shall precede them to that south which is their objective point, in
order to anticipate if possible the cravings of the two adventurous
young men. They may overtake us there, perhaps when we least expect it.

* * * * *

About thirty miles south of Santa Fe, the southern rim of the so-called
Basin of Galisteo is bounded by a low and shaggy ridge running from east
to west, whose crest is formed of trap-dyke sharply though irregularly
dentated. In Spanish this ridge and another similar one which traverses
the plain several miles north of it, running parallel to the former, is
called very appropriately El Creston, for if seen from a distance and
edgewise it strikingly resembles the crest of an antique helmet. The
plain of Galisteo expands between _crestones_, and on the edges of it
stand several villages of the Tanos. Of the Galisteo Basin a Spanish
report from the sixteenth century says: "There they have no stream;
neither are there any running brooks nor any springs which the people
could use."

The mountain clusters of the Real de Dolores and Sierra de San
Francisco, and beyond these the high Sandia chain, divide the Galisteo
country from the valley of the Rio Grande in the west. To the south
there extends a dreary plain as far as the salt marshes of the Manzano;
eastward spread the wooded slopes of the plateau; above the Pecos border
upon the basin. To the north the plain rises gradually, traversed only
by the northern _creston_, until it merges into the plain of Santa Fe.

On the southwestern corner of the Galisteo Basin a broad channel
discharges its waters into it, passing between the San Francisco range
and the mountains of Dolores. The channel is arid. Mountain torrents
rush through it only in the season of thunderstorms, and they have
burrowed and ploughed through its surface, scarring it with deep furrows
and shifting waterfalls. Near the mouth of the pass and at no great
distance from the plain, one of these arroyos has cut through an ancient
village, exposing on both ba