THE COUNTRY. 129 



horses and mules to. A high platform was built to keep 

 meat arid other things out of wolf or puma reach ; a hole 

 sunk in the ground and lined with flat stones as an oven. 

 Our winter quarters were " fixed." 



The situation chosen was on the left bank of the main 

 creek, in the angle of a sharp bend formed by its swinging 

 round close to the base of a precipitous spur from the 

 mountains bounding the valley on the southern side, and 

 just above the junction of a considerable stream coming 

 through a narrow, rocky, timbered canon, which, a little 

 way up, opened to a large valley that was one dense mass 

 of jungle, crossed and re-crossed in all directions by much- 

 used game-paths. 



To our right, for about a mile, extended flat, open 

 grass-land, followed by a succession of low parallel ridges 

 and intervening narrow glades, these ridges getting 

 higher and more precipitous, and the glades partaking 

 more and more of the character of mountain gorges as 

 they approached the base of the boundary mountains to 

 the north. This broken country was five miles across. 

 The ridges varied from one hundred to several hundred 

 feet in height, and their tops were small table-lands, some- 

 times thickly covered with cedars and pinons, at others 

 having but a fringe of those trees around them. Beyond 

 commenced the gradual slope which constituted the base of 

 the mountains that rested on it, a huge natural glacis, of an 

 average width of two miles and ascending a thousand feet. 

 From it rose tip the granite range, in a series of precipitous 

 cliffs and grassy alps, to a height of from seven thousand 

 to eight thousand feet, two-thirds of the way clothed with 



