90 EXPLORING EXPEDITION FROM SANTA FE 



depend for our supply of water upon the springs or pools to which we were led by 

 the trail we were following'. At the Tierra Blanca we encamped at the finest of these 

 springs which we saw. Here the water issues from the base of a low cliff of sand- 

 stone, of which the surfaces are whitened by a saline cflloresence, consisting in a great 

 degree'of chloride of sodium ; a phenomenon which has given to the locality the name 

 it bears. 



Our next stopping place was at the Guajelotes, a large pool of bad surface-water; 

 a natural reservoir in the sandstone rocks, containing great numbers of water-lizards — 

 Siredon — called by the Mexicans guajelotes. 



The Ojo del Cuerbo is a small spring similar to that of the Tierra Blanca, except 

 that the water is less abundant and is sulphurous. 



We had here approached comparatively near to the Sierras Aba jo and La Sal, 

 the one being twenty, the other forty miles distant. Of isolated mountain groups the 

 La Sal is considerably the higher and more extensive ; both arc, however, of insig- 

 nificant dimensions as compared with the lofty ranges of the Sierra San Miguel 



Up to this point we had constantly met with fragments of broken pottery scat- 

 tered over the surface, and had frequently seen traces of ruined buildings. 



CANON PINTADO. 



Between the Sierras Abajo and La Sal passes a natural line of drainage, marked 

 above by a formidable canon, which furrows the Sage-plain many miles up toward the 

 Sierra San Miguel;. North of the Sierra Abajo this canon terminates, or rather it opens 

 to the right and left, its walls extending to the bases of the two groups of mountains 

 I have mentioned, forming here the western terminus of the Sage-plain. To reach the 

 second and lower plateau it is necessary to descend the cliffs which are formed by the 

 cut edge of the first ; this we did, following the Spanish trail, at a point about fifteen 

 miles northeast of the Sierra Abajo, where a lateral canon enters the great one I have 

 described a few miles above its mouth. Here we descended at once more than 1,000 

 feet, leaving behind us the plateau of the Sage-plain, with its unvarying topography 

 and monotonous Cretaceous geology, to enter the great' eroded valley of the Colo- 

 rado; a region of which the geology is all Triassic or Jurassic, and where the scenery 

 exhibits all the brilliant colors which characterize the rocks of these formations in the 

 West, combined with all the variety of form which erosion can produce. From the 

 vivid colors of the walls of the canon where we entered it, it was named by our party 

 Canon Pintado. Its walls are precipitous, generally almost perpendicular, the lower 

 half composed of strata which are bright red, green, yellow or white; soft but massive 

 beds weathering, as such materials are so prone to do in this region, into arches, domes, 

 spires, towers, and a thousand other imitations of human architecture, all on a colos- 

 sal scale. The bottom is smooth and nearly level, in many places covered with the 

 finest gama grass, in others with the salt-bush (Sarcobatus). 



A section *of the rocks exposed in the canon is as follows, the thickness of the 

 strata being estimated : 



