26 NEW TRACKS IN NORTH AMERICA. 
circulars soliciting investments in town lots upon this 
magnificent site. Drawings were made of the noble city, im 
which might be seen, besides the endless rows of lofty build: 
ings, shady avenues, and the broad majestic river, docks, and 
a steamboat. These last items were unfortunate, for, in ne 
first place, the Great Rio Miembres has got a very. capricious 
habit of disappearmg and reappearing, one might say at 
pleasure; and in the second, even if it were to flow uninte: 
ruptedly for many miles below the “ city,” it would only h 
found to empty itself in a small lake, the Laguna de Guz- 
man in Chihuahua, which has no communication with the 
sea. . . j 
Six miles below our camp on the stream is a little Mexican 
settlement of some three hundred people. This had been 
abandoned for years on account of the Indians, but in 1865 it 
was again reinhabited. It is the only “city” as yet to be 
found on the Rio Miembres. Much fine bottom-land skirts 
the stream from the village to its source, hardly any of which 
is cultivated. Many curious natural ruins are to be found near | 
the western bank. There are the valley of rocks, the city of 
rocks, &c., in which huge masses of sandstone form pillars, | 
chimneys, altars, giant mushrooms, and temples which would , 
compare not unfavourably with Stonehenge, had they not been; 
geological curiosities only. I enjoyed a few hours’ photo- 
graphing amongst these grotesque forms, for they mc, 
splendid subjects for the camera. 
Six miles beyond the river is a fine hot spring, Ojo 
Caliente, the second met with on our route. It issue 
from a mound which rises some 50 feet above the level psi 
it is some 12 feet deep, and about the same in diameter, and 
looks very like the crater of an extinct volcano, although : 
mound may have been formed by the incrustations of li 
