on, gashing the country and forming
high ridges, especially toward the south and west. In other words,
here we observed for the first time barrancas, which from now on
form an exceedingly characteristic feature of the topography of the
Sierra Madre. These precipitous abysses, which traverse the mighty
mass of the sierra like huge cracks, run, as far as Sierra Madre
del Norte is concerned, mainly from east to west. In the country of
the Tarahumare, that is to say, the State of Chihuahua, there are
three very large barrancas. They are designated as Barranca de Cobre,
Barranca de Batopilas, and Barranca de San Carlos. The Sierra Madre
del Norte runs at an altitude of from 7,000 to 8,000 feet, at some
points reaching even as high as 9,000 feet. It rises so gradually in
the east, for instance, when entered from the direction of the city
of Chihuahua, that one is surprised to be suddenly almost on top of
it. The western side, however, falls off more or less abruptly, and
presents the appearance of a towering, ragged wall. In accordance
with this general trait of the mountain system, the beginnings of
the barrancas in the east are generally slight, but they quickly
grow deeper, and before they disappear in the lowlands of Sinaloa
they sometimes reach a depth of from 4,000 to 5,000 feet. Of course,
they do not continue equally narrow throughout their entire length,
but open up gradually and become wider and less steep.

Besides these large barrancas, which impede the traveller in the
highlands and necessitate a course toward the east, there are
innumerable smaller ones, especially in the western part of the
range, where large portions of the country are broken up into a mass
of stupendous, rock-walled ridges and all but bottomless chasms. A
river generally flows in the barrancas between narrow banks, which
occasionally disappear alltogether, leaving the water to rush between
abruptly ascending mountain sides.

As far as the first of the large barrancas was concerned, near the top
of which we were standing, we could for some little distance follow
its windings toward the west, and its several tributaries could be made
out in the landscape by the contours of the ridges. Barranca de Cobre
is known in its course by different names. Near the mine of Urique
(the Tarahumare word for barranca), it is called Barranca de Urique,
and here its yawning chasm is over 4,000 feet deep. Even the intrepid
Jesuit missionaries at first gave up t