12 . - NEW TRACKS IN NORTH AMERICA. 
ruins of a large village, formerly known as the Alamosa, — 
‘. about half way between Craig and Thorn. The inhabitants, — 
having abandoned their homes and the rich lands around them, — ; 
had built another village on the opposite bank, under the — 
protection of a small post, Fort M‘Rae, garrisoned by a few | 
United States troops. New Alamosa, as it is called, is the : 
only village we saw on the opposite bank for seventy miles ;_ 
and on our side, Polomas, a place of some twenty houses, 
alone remained inhabited. For twenty miles further down — 
the river than we went the valley is abandoned to the lizard 
and the rattlesnake. Then comes a section where the — 
Mexican population has been strong enough to hold its own, | 
and has been able to plant vineyards and orange-groves, and 
to gather in their fruits in due season. The district is called | 
the Mesilla valley, and is spoken of with pride by the people — 
of the country as the ‘“‘ Garden of the Rio Grande.” E 
While resting during Sunday at our last camp on the Rio 
Grande in a large valley, some twenty miles long by six 
broad, a party of Mexicans and Americans came from Mesilla ~ 
to meet General Palmer and to give us welcome. The ‘| 
General, of course, was not with us, but we drank his health 
in fragrant El Paso, grown in the Mesilla valley, and brought : 
to us by our new friends. We were surprised to come across — 
this little party in so lonely and deserted a place. I had 
much talk with them on the subject of the valley I had just 
descended for so many hundred miles. They compared 
part we were then encamped in with the Mesilla valley, 
and said that naturally it was finer in every respect, bu : 
being uninhabited and unirrigated, it was to the eye little , 
better than a parched desert filled with mezquit bushes and 
brushwood. The opinion expressed by these men, the in- | 
