36 NEW TRACKS IN NORTH AMERICA. 
mile, and this, too, before the mountains themselves had bee 
reached. These Burro Mountains were not, as they appear 
to be, an ordinary range rising from the plain, but the crownil 
ridge or summit of the great continental water-partings ; al 
although they rose from a much higher base than the rang 
to the east and west -of them, the slope up to their sides . 
not rapid enough at first to be distinctly apparent without | 
aid of our surveyors’ levels. Nothing remained for us, the 
fore, but to abandon the line which we had been survey 
and to pass round the southern extremity of the range, twe' 
miles distant, by the great Madre Plateau, in which le 
district Mr. Runk’s party was then at work. 
A march of seventeen miles parallel to the mounta' 
brought us to Soldier’s Farewell, a solitary ruin 
was once a station on the mail route dw 
the short time it was established along 4 
52nd parallel. Two miserable water-holes are the 
sources of attraction in this place. We feared they m 
be empty, as it was the end of the driest season of the ye: 
but a shower of rain early that morning had providen ial 
filled them partly up agai. While we looked at the thi 
green puddle, full of creeping things, slime, and all sorts 
abominations, from which we had to drink, a feeling of dre 
for the future involuntarily crept over us. q 
The whole country had changed, for we had at last enter 
that vast plateau upon the 32nd parallel which had | 
long been considered the only practicable highway for @ 
railway route across the continent. The Madre Plateau j 
vast plain, extending from the Rio Grande on the east, 
3° westward, and separating the Rocky Mountains fi 
those of Mexico. How thoroughly I pity the lover of : 
beautiful in nature who is obliged to traverse this frig 
Oct. 31. 
