TO THE COPPER MINES. 
217 
which border them, and rendering the valley impassa- 
ble. There does not seem sufficient space to carry a 
road over the hills, although there may be a practicable 
route within, which was not visible to us. At 11 
o’clock we reached a new settlement on the river’s 
bank, called Santa Barbara, where, finding excellent 
grass, 1 determined to encamp. The road had been 
quite sandy and rough the fourteen miles we had 
come, and as the next water at the mule spring was 
twenty miles distant, 1 thought it prudent to go no 
farther. The settlement consisted of a few jacal or 
stick houses, part of which were in the process of erec- 
tion. A deep acequia was already opened, and large 
fields of wheat and corn were now undergoing the 
process of immersion. Acres were covered with 
water ; and the soil is of so spongy a nature that we 
found it impossible to cross these overflowed places 
with the wagons, so deeply did the wheels sink into it. 
Herds of cattle and goats ; half-naked Mexicans with 
their hoes, peons hooting and yelling as they urged 
on their oxen with their long-pointed poles ; and the 
primitive wooden ploughs, turning up the virgin soil, 
exhibited a scene of industry, such as I had not before 
witnessed in the valley of the Bio Grande. 
We pitched our tents in a thick grove of large 
cotton-woods, near which passed the acequia; while 
on the opposite side was a pond or laguna, extending 
a mile or more. As this body of water was not wider 
than the river, and presented many sinuosities, I think 
it must have been formerly the channel of the Bio 
Grande ; for, like the Mississippi and other rivers 
which flow through an alluvial soil, it is continually 
