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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Map of the Hacienda de Cedeos, a private estate of over two million acres, on 

 which dwell some two thousand people. 



well up on the horizon are the high Mesas del Zorillo. Their broad level 

 tops lie in the same plane, at their borders a sheer descent is visible to 

 the point where the talus slope begins and slants off in graceful lines 

 to the rolling lands below. But such configurations are rare in that 

 region. Here and there what is left of that stratum which forms the high 

 floor of these Mesas may be visible, but only as' vestiges, for they have 

 mostly disappeared. 



Standing at the edge of one of these wide plains and looking 

 across, one may survey at a glance twenty to forty miles of moun- 

 tain barrier along the opposite side, thirty to fifty miles away. Deep 

 scalloped with canons and ravines which divide and subdivide into 

 successively smaller branches as we follow their course upwards, they 

 are ultimately lost in the rounded brow of the mountain. Below the 

 steeper slopes the low-lying, far-outreaching butresses of the range 

 finally sink into tbe plain. At the mouths of the canons, broad fans of 

 silt, gravel and other detritus from the heights above, spread out and 

 meet their neighbors on the right and left until a long, slightly undu- 

 lating footslope is formed, and gradually merge into the floor of the 

 valley. Thus the wide valley is gradually being made wider by the 

 building up of its floor, which is the accumulation of ages of the wash 

 from the mountains; the nature of the process is obvious. Where a 

 deep arroyo cuts clown through the land a section of the deposit shows 



