theatre of the new land of
industrial awakening. Within the mountain ranges--that which we have
crossed, and those which intersect this vast tableland and bound it on
three sides--lies the great wealth of minerals--gold, silver, and
others--which have attracted men of all races and all times since
Cortes came. Here the true fairy tales of long ago, of millions won by
stroke of pick, had their setting, and indeed, have it still. Upon
these hills the thankful miner reared temples to his saints, and
blessed, in altar and crucifix, the mother of God who graciously
permitted his enrichment! And as if such devotion were to be unstinted,
he also places his shrines within the bowels of the mines, and pauses
as he struggles through the dark galleries, with heavy pack of silver
rock upon his back, to bend his knee a moment before the candle-lighted
subterranean altar.

And now great desert plains unfold to view. Upon their confines arise
the blue mountain ranges which intersect them, their canyons and
slopes, though faint in distance and blurred by shimmering heat arising
from the desert floor, yet cast into distinct tracery by the rays of
the sun. Towards the azure vault overhead, as we behold the arid
landscape, eddying dust-pillars whirl skywards upon the horizon, or
perhaps a cloud of dust, far away upon the trail which winds over the
flat expanse, denotes some evidence of man--horseman or ox-cart
pursuing its leisurely and monotonous way. Upon the edges of the dry
stream-beds, or _arroyos_, which descend from the hills and lose
themselves in wide alluvial fans upon the sandy waste, a fringe of
scant vegetation appears, nourished by the water which flows down them
in time of rain.

Beneath our horses' hoofs the white alkali crust which thinly covers
the desert floor, crumbles and breaks. Gaunt cacti stretch their skinny
branches across the trail, which winds among foothills and ravines, and
the horned toads and the lizards, the only visible beings of the animal
world here, play in and out of their labyrinths as we pass. We are upon
the Great Plateau. All is vast, reposeful, boundless. The sun rises and
sets as it does upon some calm ocean, describing its glowing arc across
the cloudless vault above, from Orient to Occident. Sun-scorched by
day, the temperature drops rapidly as night falls upon these elevated
steppes, 7,000 feet or more above the level of the sea, and the bitter
cold of the rarefied air before the dawn takes