236 NEW TEACKS IN NORTH AMERICA. 



4 



fertile bottom-lands along tlie Bio Yerde — a conntry, ac- 

 cording to Leroux, "well timbered, and containing many 

 lagoons " — are now uninhabited; wbile the people of Moqui, 



r 



who live almost in a desert, have managed to fight out the 

 battle of existence down to the present day. 



Colonel Greenwood, who had charge of one of onr engi- 

 neering parties, discovered two very remarkable objects near 

 the San Francisco Mountains. One was a broken jar, into 

 the hollow of which lava had flowed. The other was the 

 skeleton of a man, encased in the same material. If the colonel 

 was not deceived, it is certain that some of the lava which 

 now covers large tracts of country in many parts of New 

 Mexico, and especially Arizona, and still looks bright and 

 fresh, was poured over the surface within the present epoch, 

 but it cannot prove that either the convulsions of the earth or 

 climatic changes produced by them so altered the condition 

 of the land that it starved out its inhabitants. The natural 

 workings of cause and effect are, I think, sufficient to account 

 for the present desolation of these regions, without calling to 

 our aid either meteorology or geology. 



EKD OF VOL. I. 



VIRTtTE AlfD CO., PEINTEBS, CITY EOAD, LOSDOIT. 



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