Chap. VIII. VALLEY OF THE RIO GRANDE. 307 
CHAPTEK VIII 
Valley of the Rio Grande — Irrigation Canals — Encampment near La Joyita — 
Visit of the Apaches — Indian Hieroglyphics — Angitic Lava over the allu- 
vial Masses of the Valley — The River breaks through a Bar of Lava — 
Water-fowl, and ill Success in hunting — Hills of Drift Sand — Excesses 
of our Waggoners — A view of Socorro — Valley of Valverde — Basalt 
— Bushes of the Mezquite — Rattlesnakes — Tarantulas — Quails — The 
Paisano — San Cristdval — Desert of the Dead — Geological Remarks, 
and Landscape Scenery — A Vegetable Monster — Donana — Sierra de los 
Organos — Fruit — Fletcher's Rancho — A Memento Mori — Deserters from 
Fort Fillmore — Grounds of Discontent — Narrows of the Rio Grande near 
El Paso — Franklin and Macgornnville. 
The numerous and extensive canals for irrigation — acequias 
— give to the valley of the Rio Grande a peculiar character 
in reference to its cultivation, and produce a pleasing im- 
pression on the traveller coining from the Steppe. This 
valley is by nature a long and narrow strip of oasis, in a desert 
extending on both sides for thousands of square miles ; or 
rather, it is a chain of basin-like oases, separated by rocky 
passes and barren defiles. The river annually overflows 
the valley more or less, but, from the great deficiency 
of rain and the want of springs and brooks to water the 
land, the moisture left behind by the inundation would not 
suffice. It is true that from out of the high and rocky 
mountains, with which the edge of the plateau is bordered 
on both sides of the valley in isolated groups, defiles and 
ravines extend down, whose rugged appearance and de- 
tached rocks show that at times they form the beds of 
mountain torrents ; but these beds are perfectly dry, 
except when, as is rarely the case, violent torrents of rain 
fall in the mountains : these temporary streams run in- 
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