8 THE PLAINS. 



of the waters. The general features and appearance 

 give the idea of a subsidence of the waters rather 

 than an elevation of the land, though the latter has been 

 the process of its development. 



This plain is greater in extent than either of the 

 others, and of an uniformity and sameness not only 

 uninteresting, but monotonous. About sixty miles from 

 Fort Lyon, on the new road to Fort Union, is one of the 

 most magnificent arid instructive views that ever met the 

 eye of a lover of nature. 



Standing on the second plain and looking west, the 

 horizon is bounded by the long line of peaks of the 

 ' Snowy Eange,' towering to the skies and glittering in 

 everlasting white. Apparently at their feet, though 

 more than a hundred miles from them, and looking like 

 a black table against a white wall, are the Eaton 

 Mountains, the first plain or horizontal upheaval. A 

 little to the right, and apparently very near, are the 

 ' Cumbres Espagnoles,' ' Spanish Peaks,' and still farther 

 to the north-west the Sangre de Christo, Greenhorn, 

 Cheyenne, and a vast succession of mountain upon 

 mountain, range after range, the whole overtopped by 

 the magnificent mountain called 'Pike's Peak,' so 

 appropriately and significantly named after its original 

 discoverer, then Lieutenant, but subsequently General 

 Zabulon Pike. 



To the south-west, and within five or six miles, the 

 ' Mesa de Maio,' an interrupted continuation of the 

 Baton plain, rises like a huge blank wall 1,000 feet from 

 the high (or second) plain upon which we stand ; and 

 which to our rear, by a sudden and precipitous plunge 

 of 800 to 1,200 feet, reaches the third or lowest 

 plain the basin proper of the Mississippi and Missouri 

 which stretches in limitless expanse to the eastward. 



From this position can be seen in plainest form, and 

 with all their marked peculiarities, the result of Nature's 

 handiwork in the four great general upheavals, which in 



