e hunted, he of course served also as a scout to nose
out danger. The six Mexicans, who were nominally cattle-drivers, but
really Coronado's minor bravos, were never suffered to ride off in a body,
and were expected to keep on both sides of the train, some in advance and
some in rear. The drivers and muleteers remained steadily with their
wagons and animals. The four soldiers were also at hand, trudging close in
front or in rear, accoutrements always on and muskets always loaded.

In this fashion the expedition had already journeyed over two hundred and
twenty miles. Following Colonel Washington's trail, it had crossed the
ranges of mountains immediately west of Abiquia, and, striking the Rio de
Chaco, had tracked its course for some distance with the hope of reaching
the San Juan. Stopped by a canon, a precipitous gully hundreds of feet
deep, through which the Chaco ran like a chased devil, the wagons had
turned westward, and then had been forced by impassable ridges and lack of
water into a southwest direction, at last gaining and crossing Pass
Washington.

It was now on the western side of the Sierra de Chusca, in the rude,
barren country over which Fort Defiance stands sentry. Ever since the
second day after leaving San Isidore it had been on the great western
slope of the continent, where every drop of water tends toward the
Pacific. The pilgrims would have had cause to rejoice could they have
travelled as easily as the drops of water, and been as certain of their
goal. But the rivers had made roads for themselves, and man had not yet
had time to do likewise.

The great central plateau of North America is a Mer de Glace in stone. It
is a continent of rock, gullied by furious rivers; plateau on plateau of
sandstone, with sluiceways through which lakes have escaped; the whole
surface gigantically grotesque with the carvings of innumerable waters.
What is remarkable in the scenery is, that its sublimity is an inversion
of the sublimity of almost all other grand scenery. It is not so much the
heights that are prodigious as the abysses. At certain points in the
course of the Colorado of the West you can drop a plumb line six thousand
feet before it will reach the bosom of the current; and you can only gain
the water level by turning backward for scores of miles and winding
laboriously down some subsidiary canon, itself a chasm of awful grandeur.

Our travellers were now amid wild labyrinths of ranges, and buttes, and