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little grassy valleys. From the acclivity on the southeast side of this 

 meadow-basin, looking toward the northwest, a magnificent view of the 

 range is gained, beginning in the rounded contours of the lower divide 

 to the south of Costilla Pass, and sweeping thence round into the north- 

 northwest, where it culminates in the lofty peaks of the Vermejo Mount- 

 ains. A little to the south of northwest, the snow-clad summits of the 

 . Oulebra Mountains just appear in a low depression in the watershed ; 

 to the south of which, and occupying a re-entering angle in the water- 

 shed to the westward, the Costilla Peak is seen in profile, a massive 

 ridge gradually culminating in a lofty cone, which appears to be sud- 

 denly broken down to the northward in a nearly vertical wall of a thou- 

 sand feet or more. To the northward, and extending eastward across 

 the open space, lies the comparatively low ridge of the Eaton Hills, 

 flanked by mesa-like ridges, which form a marked barrier along the east 

 margin of the park-basin. In the foreground, a long line of table-topped 

 Tertiary hills hide from view the " hog-back" ridges which lie parallel to 

 the range. These low mesa-hills constitute a marked characteristic in 

 the topography of the parks. They are apparently made up of arena- 

 ceous shales and sandstones, in quite horizontal position, and of various 

 levels, as though ihey owe their configuration to aqueous denudation. 

 Indeed, these low table-hills i^resent the same contours, though on a 

 much diminished scale, which prevail in the great escarpment-outcrop 

 bordering the basin of the Canadian, in which a thousand feet thickness 

 of the Tertiary and Upper Cretaceous deposits are revealed. In their 

 declivities are occasionally encountered monumental outliers of sand- 

 stone, and it seems not improbable the region may prove fertile in these 

 lesser and singular freaks of atmospheric denudation. 



The pebbles and bowlders, of which the thin sheet of drift spread over 

 these hills is largely composed, are perceptibly less smoothly abraded 

 than the coarser materials which have been transported to the lower 

 portions of the valleys, and which were derived from the same sources 

 in the mountains immediately to the west. Wherever these deposits 

 have been removed from the upland tracts, as is often the case over large 

 axeas, the disintegration of the subjacent micaceous shales and sand- 

 stone has produced a light loamy soil, which supports a fair growth of 

 herbage. In the lower levels, or low benches, the soil is mixed with a 

 large percentage of ferruginous fragments ; and in the little intervales 

 along the streams, as well as in the meadows occupying the larger valley- 

 expansions, considerable tracts of exceedingly fertile, dark, finely-com- 

 minuted soil frequently occur. These little valleys penetrate far into the 

 base of the neighboring range, where they are unexpectedly encoun- 

 tered, often of limited extent, but always surpassingly beautiful nooks, 

 with clean, verdure clothed surfaces and pine-fringed slopes. 



From the camp near the gorge by which the main branch of the Ver- 

 mejo enters the Tertiary plateau — a charming spot, nestled between the 

 wooded declivity which forms the eastern rim of the park-basin and the 

 low mesas rising out of the basin, opening out into a little park just to 

 the south, with glimpses of the glistening crests of the Costilla and Ver- 

 mejo Peaks— the trail strikes across the park in a westerly direction, 

 gaining the crest of the massive hog-back ridge in a distance of some 

 three miles. The eastern declivity is paved with the angular blocks of 

 the reddish gray quartzitic rock which outcrops in the crest, where it 

 shows a steep inclination to the northwestward, or nearly vertical. 

 This is the great dike-like ridge of the lower sandstone of the Creta- 

 ceous, which constitutes so marked and persistent a topographical feature 

 along the eastern foot of theKockv Mountains for several hundred miles' 



