s towns and cities; the country round the Great Salt
and Utah Lakes, where the germ of a Mormon nation is expanding on all
sides; and it is traversed in its whole breadth by the Rocky
Mountains. An English family, after being ruined in St Louis, and
reduced to their last hundred pounds, are persuaded by a Scottish
miner to accompany him across this desert to New Mexico. 'They are a
wonderful people,' says the story-teller, 'these same Scotch. They are
but a small nation, yet their influence is felt everywhere upon the
globe. Go where you will, you will find them in positions of trust and
importance--always prospering, yet, in the midst of prosperity, still
remembering, with strong feelings of attachment, the land of their
birth. They manage the marts of London, the commerce of India, the
fur-trade of America, and the mines of Mexico. Over all the American
wilderness you will meet them, side by side with the backwoods-pioneer
himself, and even pushing him from his own ground. From the Gulf of
Mexico to the Arctic Sea, they have impressed with their Gaelic names
rock, river, and mountain; and many an Indian tribe owns a Scotchman
for its chief.'

The adventurers join a caravan, which is attacked by Indians, and the
family of the destined Robinson find themselves alone in the
wilderness, 800 miles from the American frontier on the east, 1000
miles from any civilised settlement on either the north or south, and
200 miles from the farthest advanced lines of New Mexico in the
desert. They are, in short, lost; but in due time they are found again
by other explorers. These strangers are standing on the edge of a
cliff several hundred feet sheer down. 'Away below--far below where we
were--lay a lovely valley, smiling in all the luxuriance of bright
vegetation. It was of nearly an oval shape, bounded upon all sides by
a frowning precipice, that rose around it like a wall. Its length
could not have been less than ten miles, and its greatest breadth
about half of its length. We were at its upper end, and of course
viewed it lengthwise. Along the face of the precipice there were trees
hanging out horizontally, and some of them even growing with their
tops downward. These trees were cedars and pines; and we could
perceive also the knotted limbs of huge cacti protruding from the
crevices of the rocks. We could see the wild mezcal, or maguey-plant,
growing against the cliff--its scarlet leaves contrasting finely with
the dark foliage