96 NEW TRACKS IN NORTH AMERICA. - 
meets the Magdalena Road at Santa Anna, a town a few miles 
south of that place. The third route goes still more to the | 
westward. It leaves the second route at Aravaca, goes thence | 
to Altar, and strikes the Magdalena Road a few miles north of | 
Querobabi, a ranche eighty-five miles north of Hermosillo.* — 
The first of these routes is the shortest and best; but it is 
the most subject to attack from the wild Indians and robbers 
whereas the other two, lying as they do in the Popa 
country, are much safer to travel by. These routes were 
very little known, whereas the first one had once been partly 
surveyed ; this consideration finally decided us upon taking” 
a course of our own, in order that we might become acquainted 
with the other two routes and their advantages for railroa 1 
purposes. 4 
Sonora itself is a very mountainous country; from the 
Gulf coast it rises gradually to a central plateau, which 1 : 
capped by mountains called generally the Sierra Madre. 
For at least one hundred miles to the west of the dividing 
ridge, range after range covers the whole country. Theit 
altitude is not great, but they are very continuous and per : 
sistent; they are rugged and narrow, and lie almost m 
riably parallel to each other, except about the United States” 
boundary, where a transverse line of upheaval seems to have 
thrown the whole country there into confusion. The direc 
tion of the parallel ranges is mostly north-west by sou 
east, with a tendency in the centre of Sonora to run north ané 
south. “Along the narrow valleys between these ranges fo 
the little streams which rise either on the southern slopes 
the northern watershed, or on the western sides of the Sie 
Madre; and hard work have they to break through t 
succession of ranges. At last, however, when the zigz 
* These routes are given, with tables of distances, in the Appendix. — 
