cky
Mountains, and running, first southerly, and then east, until it becomes
part of the Arkansas. As this river bends eastwardly, it brushes the
northern end of the Llano Estacado, whose bluffs sometimes approach
close to its banks, and at other times are seen far off, resembling a
range of mountains--for which they have been frequently mistaken by
travellers.

The boundary of the west side of the "Staked Plain" is more definite.
Near the head-waters of the Canadian another large river has its source.
This the Pecos. Its course, you will observe, is nearly south, but
your map is not correct, as for several hundred miles the Pecos runs
within a few degrees of east. It afterwards takes a southerly
direction, before it reaches its embouchure in the Rio Grande. Now the
Pecos washes the whole western base of the Llano Estacado; and it is
this very plain, elevated as it is, that turns the Pecos into its
southerly course, instead of leaving it to flow eastward, like all the
other prairie-streams that head in the Rocky Mountains.

The eastern boundary of the Llano Estacado is not so definitely marked,
but a line of some three hundred miles from the Pecos, and cutting the
head-waters of the Wichita, the Louisiana Bed, the Brazos, and Colorado,
will give some idea of its outline. These rivers, and their numerous
tributaries, all head in the eastern "ceja" (brow) of the Staked Plain,
which is cut and channelled by their streams into tracts of the most
rugged and fantastic forms.

At the south the Llano Estacado tapers to a point, declining into the
mezquite plains and valleys of numerous small streams that debouch into
the Lower Rio Grande.

This singular tract is without one fixed dweller; even the Indian never
makes abode upon it beyond the few hours necessary to rest from his
journey, and there are parts where he--inured as he is to hunger and
thirst--dare not venture to cross it. So perilous is the "Jornada," or
crossing of the Llano Estacado, that throughout all its length of four
hundred miles there are only two places where travellers can effect it
in safety! The danger springs from the want of water, for there are
spots of grass in abundance; but even on the well-known routes there
are, at certain seasons, stretches of sixty and eighty miles where not a
drop of water is to be procured!

In earlier times one of these routes was known as the "Spanish Trail,"
from Santa Fe to San Antonio de Bexar, of Texas; and