942 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 



near Sau Antonio I get tlie lirst glimpse of 

 the yncca, or Spanish l)ayonet. San Anto- 

 nio is a very tine city in many respects, and 

 the view that stretches off across tne valleys 

 on every side is wonderful. Most of the 

 liouses compare favorably with those in our 

 Northern cities. The greater part of this 

 whole country is covered with mesquite- 

 trees, which at this season resemble old de- 

 caying peach-trees. They stand for miles 

 and miles just about as far apart as trees in 

 an orchard, and the eye looks longingly for 

 peach, apple, or cherry trees, which they all 

 at times resemble ; but, alas ! there are no 

 fruit-orchards of any kind here. In fact, 1 

 haven't seen a nursen/ in the whole Southern 

 States. Birds whose" voices are new to me 

 warble springlike melodies. Although they 

 have had an abundance of rain here, most 

 of the river-beds are dry — characteristic, 1 

 suppose, of this region, which begins to 

 seem more and more desert-like. The val- 

 leys here are immense. Imagine a great 

 soup-plate, 35 miles across, and you have it. 



It is sundown again (Nov. 15), and^-^we 

 have had 11 hours of sunshine once more. 

 What an 11 hours they have been^! I 

 thought I had seen level plains before, but 

 —I can't describe them. We have just 

 passed one "cow pasture" that I do be- 

 lieve took the train a plump hour to make 

 one side. I saw some strange animals in 

 the distance that I thought I had never seen 

 before. They looked like sheep, but they 

 were miniature cows. When we got near 

 they were real cows. Just think of the cows 

 in a lot 30 miles across ! I wonder what boy 

 drives them up to be milked, and who does 

 the milking. I hear tlie tinkling of the cow- 

 bells now. The lot is surely fenced, for the 

 cows and sheep have gnawed the grass down 

 close in the fenced fields ; but the wild land 

 is all grown up. It is fun to see cows, 

 horses, sheep— aye, and rabl)ets too— scamper 

 away from near the track when the train 

 dashes past. The rabbets often hide be- 

 hind tlie prickly pears. This 30-mile pas- 

 ture has also its one mountain, and it was 

 visible from a fast -running train for at 

 least an hour. Cattle and sheep paths 

 traverse the pastui'e as far as I can see. 

 When they wish a pasture to connect with 

 one across the lailroad they tunnel under 

 the track. I am told one man sometimes 

 owns these vast fields and the stock upon it. 

 In this case he would be appropriately call- 

 ed a "• cattle king.'" Now, if it is these cat- 

 tle kings that are to utilize these vast 

 wastes of desolation, and hence give em- 

 ployment to many, may God's blessing rest 

 u])on them. 



IIow did those strange hills come? Tlie 

 next view l)egins to give a clew. It is a 

 mountain with a fiat top and precipitous 

 sides. More of them, with a large area on 

 top, suggest that the mountain-top, or some- 

 tliing still higher, was once level ground. 

 I5ut where is the fearful amount of soil that 

 must havelibeen washed away? It is sug- 

 gested that this vast plain was once the 

 bed of a great and mighty river; the table 

 lands on each side favor the idea, and then 

 we can sup)jose these queer mountains were 

 (uiginally islands that have, by the rains of 



ages, been rounded off or gullied according 

 to the nature of the soil. 



The rocks and soil here are quite like those 

 in the region of Mammoth C'ave, for they 

 are constantly gullied and formed into cav- 

 ities by the water. At Del Rio we came 

 near the Rio Grande, and a " grand river'' it 

 is, in very truth, for it has, during ages 

 past, cut its path down through solid rock 

 to a depth of from 200 to 300 feet. Well, all 

 the small streams from the plain on eacli 

 side followed suit, cutting fearfully wild 

 and deep canyons through all that country. 

 These gorges are so deep, wide, and fre- 

 quent, that making a railroad over them 

 became a serious problem. They finally de- 

 cided to cut it in the solid rock, following 

 the Rio Grande, curves and all. We went 

 through in the night ; but, / 



thanks to a kind Providence, / 



we had a brilliant full moon; / 



and as ours is the rear car, o \ 



the conductor kindly allow- /^ 

 ed us to stand on the rear i k. k T.iuk. 

 platform. The diagram ad- \ 

 joining will give you some- ^ 



thing of an idea of it. Let \ 



O be the locomotive ; the ^ 



plain is above, and the river / 



/ 



r 



( 



/ 



below. The train runs in 

 this way for many miles. At 

 one point is a station called 

 Painted Cave. This cave has 

 an area of one acre, and was 

 once a stronghold of the Co- 

 manche Indians. When the 

 young braves were painting 

 up for the war-dance they 

 tried theirhandson the walls 

 of the cave. This painting 

 is there yet, and hence the 

 name. 



Friday morning, 16th. 

 — The sun rises to-day 

 another half -hour later. '^"''■' / 



The sunsets, and the -^ 



sunrises are, out here, beautiful beyond any 

 thing I ever saw before. For fully an hour 

 this morning the clouds presented a series 

 of continuing dissolving views. I hope 

 there was somewhere an audience of more 

 than one ; but that one rejoiced at every 

 change, and voted it an improvement on the 

 preceding. When it was light enough to 

 see the landscape, I found that that too had 

 changed. The ground was of light sand, 

 and occasional patches were as smooth and 

 clean as any tidy housewife would want her 

 floor; and, neatly dotted over this unique 

 lawn, were different cacti, yuccas, and a va- 

 riety of low bright-green shrubs. Just a 

 square rod, taken almost anywhere from 

 these thousands of acres, woiM make about 

 the prettiest ornament for a front dooryard 

 you ever saw. At the first station they had 

 made a little garden of the shrubs of the 

 desert ; but Nature's arrangement was rath- 

 er ahead of them after all. The yuccas 

 were out of bloom, but the great clusters of 

 dried flowers indicate what the scene must 

 have been a little time ago. New forms, 

 not only of the vegetation, out the hills and 

 the sky, are constantly presenting them- 

 selves. A little later, we had the grount] 



