288 WAGGON MOUNDS. Book TI. 
country. Below us the river falls into a hollow — Canada 
■ — into which, also, the fissure of the Ocate opens. 
We travelled round this deep and narrow cleft (Cation 
del Ocate) at its head. The view down into this chasm, 
locked in by perpendicular sandstone walls, is exceedingly 
wild. The edge is bordered by pine trees, and pines 
stretch forth their heads from out the depth of the abyss. 
In the middle of a barren and level plain is this precipice, 
which leads down into a deep wilderness hidden from 
sight, — one of the most fearful scenes I have ever witnessed. 
The "Waggon Mounds," which the road passes further 
on, are pointed summits of trap. The rock is the same 
as that of the Babbit's Ears and Bound Mount ; but it 
presents here, as in numerous rocky points, fissures and 
precipitous declivities of the surrounding country, an 
almost columnar formation — and thus approaches the 
character of a real basalt. The traveller first climbs over 
limestone, over which the trap has poured. In the lowest 
stratum, in contact with the limestone, it has a schisteous 
character : towards the top it becomes massy, and irre- 
gularly burst and cleft. Bed and brown scoriae lie here 
and there on the surface of the declivity. 
Before reaching the foot of the mountain, a semicircle 
of the plateau, closed in by the steep declivity of the 
higher mesa 1 or terrace covered with the trap lava, is seen 
to the right of the road . This amphitheatre contains a salt 
lake, in the shape of a crescent, its convex side follow- 
ing the course of the rocky acclivity. The efflorescence 
of this lake, which covers the soil with a white deposit, 
appears chiefly to consist of soda. 
1 Mesas, i. e. tables : the mountain plateaus and terraces that are so frequent 
in Mexico are so called in Spanish. 
