Chap. IV. RIO DE LOS MIMBEES. 479 
If the Sierra de los Mimbres, a chain of mountains said 
to connect the Kocky Mountains and the great Sierra 
Madre, really existed anywhere except on maps and in 
geographies, our road must have led over it. Between 
Cook's Spring and the Rio de los Mimbres we twice 
crossed some heights, but these belonged only to the lower 
spurs or advanced groups of mountains more north ; and 
the road might have passed round them further south over 
a plain, if its course had not to be determined by the 
watering-places. In these spurs are found the sources of 
the Rio de los Mimbres, a small and beautiful river of the 
steppe, flowing through a wide plain southward, and reach- 
ing, in the wet season, the Laguna de Santa Maria. This 
prairie-lake is not separated by any mountain from the 
Rio Grande. During the dry season the river dries up in 
the steppe. At the part where we crossed, it was sur- 
rounded by green meadows, and bordered by a thick 
underwood of Mimbre (Chilopsis) ; it looked one of the 
pleasantest spots I have seen on our long journey. In the 
neighbourhood game is abundant. 
We found, on our way through this part of the country, 
in several places, limestone and sandstone ; the latter over- 
lying the former, and both bordering on porphyry and 
trachyte. Sometimes the sandstone formed crenelated 
walls. But, on the whole, the landscape was an undu- 
lating steppe, overgrown with grass, bordered, here and 
there, with isolated mountains and mountain-groups. On 
the other side of the Ojo de Vaca, where the road leads 
over the advanced spurs of a group of mountains which 
we left to the north, and the highest peak of which the 
North- Americans call Ben Moore, a spring is said to 
rise in the hollow of a rock, which owes its name — Ojo 
de Inez — to a romantic event, the deliverance of a 
