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Ex. Doc. No. 41. 459 



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They cut the stalks of the maize, or Indian corn, and, after strip- 

 ping it of the leaves, pound it with heavy wooden mallets until it 

 is reduced to a pulp; after steaming it sufficiently, they express the 

 juice by means of a rude press, and then evaporate it to the proper 

 consistence in earthen jars. Leaving Embuda in the morning, a 

 half hour's ride brought us to the field on which the gallant Captain 

 Burgwin, U. S. dragoons, so' signally defeated the united Mexican 

 and Indian forces, in January, 1847. The road here is so narrow^ 



X that two horses cannot walk abreast, and it is flanked on each side 



: by high precipices. 



. . The rocks rise in abrupt massea on either side; on the west ter- 

 minating in a level table, capped with a sheet of lava. Amidst 

 these confused masses of broken sandstone and lava, numerous 

 cedars and ^^pinons" have caught root; and here it was that the 

 combined forces lay in ambush to surprise Captain Burgwin's 

 little detachment. After passing the. battle-field, the road con- 

 tinues to follow up the dry bed of a mountain stream, until it 

 reaches the summit, 3 miles from Erabudo, w^here it again descends 

 through a similar ravine, to the town of '^ La Joya.'' This is the 

 most northern settlement on the Rio del Norte. Just here the 

 stream breaks from the rocky canon, and the hitherto pent up 

 channel spreads out into a valley near half a mile in width- This 

 marks the beginning of the river settlements, which may be re- 

 garded as continuous for 150 miles. On the plain we saw corn and 

 wheat, and, for the first time, found orchards of peach and apricot 

 trees. Melons, too, were abundant, but of inferior quality, w^hilst 

 hanging in festoons, the bright colored pepper, or '^ Chili Colo- 

 rado,'' adorned every house. 



Our road now lay along the east bank of the Rio del Norte; some- 

 times passing through the bottom itself, and sometimes ascending 

 the gravelly bluff. On our left hand the country rolls away to the 

 base of the Rocky mountains, presenting little else than a succes- 

 sion of gravelly hills, whose sides were covered with dwarf cedars. 

 On the right hand, or west bank of the river, the high bluff of the 

 table land reaches quite to the water's edge, some 3 or 400 feet in 

 height. The broken section shows a formation of horizontal sand- 



* stone, capped with the dark colored vesicular lava. 



This lava sheet appears to have extended over a vast expanse* of 

 country. It forms the capping or upper formation of all the table 

 lands in Upper New Mexico, on both sides of the mountains; 

 and its broken fragments are every where strewed along the beds 

 of the streams, giving an air of loneliness and desolation to the 

 scenery. The next settlement, or village, is '^LosLuceros," a town 



of little importance, 

 » Fifteen miles below '^La Joya," is a town, or pueblo, named San 

 Juan. The houses here are built of mud and palisades. They ap- 

 pear to have a dry trench, in which a row of palisades, from 6 to 8 

 inches in thickness, is planted; the interstices of which are daubed 

 with the clayey earth from which they make the ^'adobes" that are 



used in building their walls. 



They enter into their houses through the top^ by means of move- 



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