ALAMO MUCHO. LAS 
cultivating the soil to produce bread, fruits, and meats 
in abundance. 
Their village consists of twenty-three miserable old 
huts or wigwams built of straw and rushes. Some were 
covered with raw hides of various colors. A few small 
patches of ground were cultivated, not exceeding alto- 
gether a couple of acres. This was not for the want 
of land, as there are many hundred acres of good land 
around them, which by irrigation could be made very 
fertile. From appearances near the village, I was led 
to believe that there had long been a settlement here, 
there being not only traces of former buildings in every 
direction, but also of acequias or trenches for irrigating 
the lands. 
At4 p.m. struck our tents. The road continued 
good for six or seven miles, its course still south-east. 
The grass had now disappeared, and the thorny chap- 
poral which had taken its place was the first indica- 
tion that we were passing into a desert region. We 
now entered a caflion, or mountain pass, caused, like 
most others, by the action of running water for ages. 
This pass had been used only for mules, until Colonel 
Cooke entered the country with wagons. Not being 
able to get through, he was obliged to come to a 
halt, and open a passage with axes and hammers 
through the solid rock, a work of great labor. This 
defile consists of perpendicular walls of rock about 
fifteen feet high, and of a width barely sufficient for 
wagons to pass. In its bed are large masses of rock 
reaching to the axle-trees. At the narrowest point 
one of our wagons stuck fast; but after taking out the 
mules, by dint of lifting and prying, we at length 
