128 
DELAWARE CREEK 
coffee, and sugar, — an acceptable addition to our stock 
of pork and hard bread, which, though very good, 
was not sufficient to carry us to our journey’s end. 
In fact, but for this assistance, we must have come 
on short allowance at once. 
After putting up a barrel of pork, with a quantity 
of bread, sugar, coffee, etc., which our host undertook 
to send back immediately to the spring at the foot 
of the mountain, for the party we had left behind, 
we took leave of our good friends, and dashed off in 
fine spirits, for Thorne’s Wells, in the mountain, called 
the “ Cornudos del Alamo,” or Horns of the Alamo, 
thirty-three miles distant, which I hoped to reach 
before dark. The road was most monotonous for the 
first twenty miles ; the great abundance of yuccas and 
cacti giving a strange and striking air to the vegeta- 
tion. We saw splendid specimens of a large tree-like 
cactus ( Opuntia arhorescens). This is a much branched 
species, with clusters of yellow fruit at the ends of its 
long, horrible, spiny arms. Specimens were seen from 
six to ten feet high, and twenty to thirty feet in circum- 
ference. The country is slightly undulating, and not 
a level plain, as it appeared to be from the hills. The 
soil seemed barren, and in many places was covered 
with saline incrustations. Several dog-towns were 
passed. At noon, saw a great cloud of dust rising from 
the plain immediately ahead of us ; which, as we drew 
near, was found to proceed from ten large wagons of 
ten mules each, belonging to Mr. Daguerre, on their 
way from El Paso, to relieve the train we had just left. 
At 6 o’clock, reached the Cornudos del Alamo ^ towards 
which we had been journeying since our start this 
