Chap. VI. LA MOEA. 289 
South of the principal summit extends a line of trap-rocks 
with pointed and columnar tops, rendering still more 
gloomy the wild character of the adjacent country, which 
is intersected by the rocky hollows of the Canadian Kiver 
which are covered with pine forest. 
Passing over a high vaulted limestone plateau, inter- 
sected by the sandstone valleys of Wolf Creek and Duck 
Creek, we descended into the valley of the Mora, a small 
river, on which, higher up, at the foot of the mountain- 
range, lies the small New Mexican town of the same name. 
Immediately below, in the valley, are the first New Mexi- 
can settlements — the house of Mr. Waters — and further 
below Barclay's Fort, a fortified private dwelling, occupied 
by that gentleman and his New Mexican servants. 
On the road from the Waggon Mounds to this spot are 
seen, to the right, the first heights covered with forest 
(pines) ; whilst to the left the view extends into the wooded 
lateral hollows of the Canadian. Here and there the 
road itself touches the forest — the first met with from the 
Missouri frontier to this place. The road, in this region, 
runs over a terrace, above which the mountains rise in the 
west, whilst in the east the above-mentioned defiles inter- 
sect it, and thus form the transition to the lower country. 
The Anglo-Americans call the little river whose valley 
we here reached, as well as the little town, " Moro," — pro- 
bably from the word "moor." But the name is Mora, a word 
which signifies a mulberry, or the mulberry-tree. 1 Near 
the house of Mr. Waters, which, being the first dwelling of 
civilized man after a wilderness of many hundred miles, 
deserves mention, two small rivers meet, one of which 
1 In the same manner the tops of the I little town should be called the Mora 
mountain-chain that rises behind this | Peaks, and not the Moro Peaks. 
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