utter worthlessness, exude their briny tears in unremitting succession, which, as the solar rays strike on them with kind intent to wipe away, spread o'er their parent surfaces bleached shrouds of shining salt.
The latter part of this description, so far as my observation has extended, will apply to nearly the entire valley of the Cimarone after it emerges from the cañon.
The place at which this romantic valley first attains its full width, is the confluence of a small tributary to the main creek, near an isolated summit, that protrudes far out from the mountain range and commands the approaches from either direction.
This peak is five or eight hundred feet high, and inaccessible, except from the back ground by a gradual acclivity scarcely wide enough for two persons to ascend abreast The top presents a small area of level surface, securely defended by an enclosing wall of rock, five or six feet in height, raised at its brow evidently by the hand of art. A better position, in a military point of view, for a fortification, is rarely found. Fifty men, suitably provisioned and equipped, might successfully defend it against an army of thousands.
The rocks of this vicinity exhibit a more striking variety of color than any I ever before witnessed. Their predominant classification enumerates granite, sandstone (generally ferruginous,) limestone, and slate. These were disclosed in abrupt escarpments of several hundred feet altitude, or in isolated, quadrangular masses with vertical sides, assuming the appearance of gigantic fortifications, temples and palaces;— or in a more multiform aspect, now portraying vast walls with narrow basements, that, diverging from the mountains, intersect the valley at intervals from side to side, except, perchance, at a well-formed gateway, — now, towering monuments, spires, and pyramids, and again sculptured statues of men and beasts.
All these magnificent representations are gorgeously decked with parti-colored strata lying tier above tier, in regular order, some white, others black, blue, brown, green, gray, yellow, red, purple, or orange, and so strangely intermingled that they cannot fail to excite the admiration of every beholder.
The Cimarone rises in the range of table lands thirty-five or forty miles east-southeast of Taos, and, after following a serpentine course for nearly six hundred miles, empties into the Arkansas some distance above Fort Gibson. As it emerges from the mountains, (where it is a stream of considerable depth and a rapid current, confined to a narrow space between high clayey banks, with a bed of rock and pebbles,) it expands to a great width, and, in a short distance, its waters become brackish and unfit for use, till they finally disappear among the
quicksands, and leave a dreary waste of worse than emptiness, to mark the course of the transient volumes produced by the melting snows of spring and the annual rains of autumn.
During its course through the Great American Desert, not a tree or shrub graces its banks. Its mountain valley, however, is ornamented with numerous and beautiful groves of cottonwood, that present among their underbrush a profuse abundance of plum, cherry, gooseberry, and currant bushes, with grape vines; while the adjoining hills afford oak, pine, pinion, and cedar.
