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extent. But at tbis point, in its broken-down condition, it has lost 

 somewhat in the distinctive character which lends so picturesque a 

 feature to its outcrop in other localities. Where the Verinejo breaks 

 through the ridge to the south of the trail, in the walls of the picturesque 

 little canon, the edges of the metamorphosed sandstone are finely dis- 

 played, steeply tilted beyond the vertical, with weathered niches and 

 pinnacled crest. 



To the west, and parallel with the hog back, a belt of rolling country 

 two or three miles in width is crossed, in which occasional outcrops of 

 deep-reddish and variegated micaceous sandstone and beds of conglom- 

 erate are observed, gently dipping northwestward at an angle muchless 

 than the quartzite in the outlying Cretaceous ridge. Here the surface 

 is rough, the soil i)Oor, and covered by l)uuches of coarse herbage and 

 a straggling growth of gnarled piues and low undergrowth. Finally, 

 the trail enters the gorge of the Vermejo at the foot of the range, and 

 begins the ascent to the summit of the Costilla Pass amidst a wild con- 

 fusion of rugged igneous masses, rent by a labyrinth of deep, narrow 

 ravines. The walls of the passages are composed of a dark-bi-own 

 vesicular, lava-like rock, with huge masses of greenstone, piled in irregu- 

 lar rugged ridges or isolated domes. A steep climb of about two miles, 

 and the trail emerges upon the high undulatiug mountain-meadows, 

 which here occupy the summit of the range, winding through groves of 

 asi)en and spruce, and over grassy slopes, in whose bosom dark alpine 

 lakelets mirror the sky. Our approach frightens up a few small teal, 

 who seek refuge in the coarse grasses which grow around the peaty 

 margins. The rude shelters and corral iuclosures, half hidden in the 

 neighboring copses, give evidence of occupancy, during the summer 

 mouths, by iiocks which are driven from the valleys to graze the abun- 

 dant pasturage, and which do much toward lessening the sense, of the 

 solitude that reigns around. 



The transition from the wild, chaotic belt to these open Ifeights is sud- 

 den and unexpected ; and thence to the summit the trail pursues a com- 

 paratively easy way over a rolling surface, apparently molded in the 

 drift, to the sag or lowest point of the pass, where it attains an altitude 

 of 9,500 feet. To the north and south, the range rises into somewhat 

 higher wooded heights, and to the west the massive snow-clad summits 

 of the Culebras rise out of a mountainous tract just beyond a little val- 

 ley, which stee[)ly descends to join the Rio Costilla in the basin of the 

 Eio Grande. The snow-fields crowning the Culebras are in places deeply 

 discolored, as though with dust. To the south, the eye wanders over a 

 succession of wooded ridges, which reach down into the Rio Grande 

 basin, finally resting upon the white crowns of the Red River and Taos 

 Mountains, twenty to thirty miles away. 



But it is to the eastward we are mainly concerned, and here a revela- 

 tion meets the gaze. In a broad gap, bounded by long, abrupt, spruce- 

 clad mountain-spurs, whose sides have been devastated by the fires, 

 lies the middle ground, filled by the massive undulations of the meta- 

 raorphic belt, and just beyond the great Tertiary plateau, whose surface 

 is corrugated by the numerous tributaries of the Canadian flowing to 

 the southeast, the plateau having a very perceptible general descent in 

 the same direction from its culmination in the watershed of the Raton 

 Hills on the north. The intervening ridges often flatten out into level 

 expanses, interspersed with an open growth of pine and extensive up- 

 land pastures. In the distance, the view is limited by the Chicorica 

 Mesa, whose level suuimit, here and there interrupted by conical eleva- 

 tions resembling volcanic cones, stretches from Fishers Peak far to the 



