THE SANTA FE ROUTE. 71 
of milepost 779, half a mile beyond Ojita siding. The Spanish word 
ojita (o-hee’ta) means little spring. 
The sandstone in the ridge west of the railway is thick and hard, and 
is a persistent member in the middle of the great succession of red 
beds throughout this region. It is crossed by the railway in a sharp 
turn to the west at milepost 785, at the bridge over Tecolote (tay-co- 
lo’ tay) Creek. 
From this place westward the surface of the sandstone is traversed 
for some distance. On some of the higher mesas adjoining the track 
the overlying red shales remain. 
FIGURE 13.—Section across the east sl of the Rocky Mountain uplift near Ojita, 8 miles southwest of 
; Vegas, N. Mex. a, Limestone of Magdalena group; b, thick, hard buff sandstone; c, of hard 
sandstone in red shale; d, Triassic sandstone; e, gray shale (Morrison); f, Purgatoire formation and 
Dakota sandstone, 
At Chapelle there are long slopes of the hard sandstone. A mile 
beyond Chapelle the old Mexican plaza of Bernal (bare-nahl’) is — 
passed a short distance north of the railway. Near 
Chapelle. by, at Bernal Springs, the Colorado volunteers 
oe ate ag camped in 1862 before their successful battle with the 
wee Texans, who were fresh from victory over the Federal 
troops at Valverde and encouraged by their easy occupation of 
Albuquerque and Santa Fe. A mile south of Bernal rises the well- 
known landmark Starvation Hill, a butte capped by a thick mass of 
the hard sandstone above referred to. This butte was the refuge of 
a party of Spaniards pursued by Indians, and it is stated that they 
were kept on the hill until they finally starved to death. There is a 
cross on the top, erected by the Penitentes, of whom there are many 
among the Mexican residents of this region. The butte is an outlier 
of a high mesa to the south, which consists of a widely extended 
platform capped by the hard sandstone that extends along the rail- 
way east of Chapelle, here carried to considerable height by the upward 
rise of the strata. Owing to the hardness of the capping rock and 
the softness of the underlying red shale the mesa presents a very 
precipitous outward slope toward the north. 
In passing along the foot of this mesa the railway is on the lower 
red beds for a short distance and then from milepost 792 to 794 on the 
