Chap. VIII. EXCESSES OF OUK WAGGONERS. 313 
In this excursion from our caravan, I came to high and 
extensive quicksand hills covering the augitic rock. Their 
shape was exactly that of the snowdrifts met with on the 
summits of the Alps ; and, indeed, these formations in the 
landscape reminded me vividly of the Alpine scenery. I 
had wandered miles away from my companions, when 
I recollected the peril of my position. I loaded my gun 
with buck-shot, and set out to find the nearest way to 
rejoin the caravan. 
Our next night-encampment was below Sabino. Some 
of our people begged to be allowed to return to the village, 
and join in a dance. On this occasion a North American 
so excited the jealousy of a native peasant, that he was 
surrounded, and a general attack was made upon him. 
At this he drew a small pistol from his pocket, and, like 
Don Juan, fired into the crowd of people in the room ; 
fortunately, however, the affair turned out quite as harm- 
less as in the opera — no one was hurt, and the culprit 
was unheeded. I have before observed that the Mexicans 
living on the borders suffer much from the insolence and 
violence of the North Americans. The next night one of 
our North American drivers found one of our Mexican 
muleteers asleep at his post, and, to arouse him, he gave 
him a blow which laid open his head with a wound about 
two inches long ; it nearly killed him, and the driver 
openly boasted that this had been his intention. 
The road down the valley lay sometimes along the 
bottom, and sometimes over the hills forming the lowest 
lateral terrace. In a geological point of view, the latter 
are in part merely the separated portions of the alluvial 
masses adjacent to the mountains, or they consist of flats 
and bars of basaltic or augitic streams of lava, which have 
filled a part of the valley, as at Joyita. Such a bar, forming, 
