464 ALAMOS DE SAN JUAN. Book III. 
in the valleys, was increased when we reached the plateau. 
Over a wide tract, on mountain, valley, and plain, the 
grass had been burnt, so that our animals suffered greatly 
from want. Here and there only were some remains of 
the old grass, and in a few of the most favoured spots the 
young grass was springing up. The burnt-up tract ex- 
tended over hundreds of square miles ; and where this 
desolation terminated, the ravages of the prairie-marmots 
commenced, and spread over an equal extent of ground. 
The want of water increased greatly as we proceeded. 
Several caravans with waggons drawn by oxen, and large 
droves of cattle, on their route to California, had at this 
time lost hundreds, nay thousands of their beasts in these 
very parts, and the road was strewn with their bones. 
The last watering-place of the Limpia range (on the 
plateau to the west of the denies) is called by the North 
Americans " Head of the Limpias." I am not sure whe- 
ther this is not the same spot to which the Mexicans have 
given the name of Alamos de San Juan. At all events 
the two spots, if not the same, are situated close to 
one another. We halted at the Alamos, where — in a 
depression of the plateau, at the foot of rocky hills with 
interesting detached masses of porphyry, enclosed by a 
grove of old poplars and surrounded by evergreen oaks — 
we came to a copious spring. Some of our people rambled 
over the hills, where they found among the rocks the 
naked corpse of a white man, which appeared to have been 
lying there for several days. The place bore traces of a 
desperate fight, but we had no time to search into the 
matter further. As the corpse was not scalped, it seems 
that the murderer was no Indian. 
Proceeding hence, we came to a barren, high plain, with 
single mountains and isolated rocks, mostly of rounded 
