486 WILD SCENEEY. Book III. 
overgrown with juniper-bushes, dwarf oaks, yuccas, dasy- 
liriums, cacti, and agaves. To the inexperienced man it 
is incomprehensible how large baggage-waggons can be 
brought down. This operation was attended with such diffi- 
culties, that it took two entire days to proceed a few miles. 
Every waggon was obliged to have two wheels locked, and 
to be kept up with cords, whilst several drivers had to lead 
each couple of every team through the underwood and 
blocks of stone lying about. We had to drive the herd 
back from the place where we spent the night to the 
spring we had last passed ; and it was taken at night to 
pasture on the mountain-sides, along which I had to grope 
my way on hands and feet, gun in hand, while on guard. 
From these heights the road sunk into a labyrinth of de- 
files, in which it w T as difficult to trace any connexion. 
Huge masses of debris — from which rise mighty blocks 
and towers of solid rock — showed different colours, like 
masses of clay which, containing various oxides, had been 
exposed to fire ; had the road passed through the large 
open crater of a volcano the scene could not have been 
more wild and chaotic. 
At length we came to a more regularly formed valley, 
which led out of the mountains into open country. Along 
the road we saw horizontal layers of limestone resting on the 
eruptive masses of the mountains, and therefore, of course, 
more recent than the latter. In a narrow cleft amongst 
the limestone strata copious springs gush forth_, forming 
a beautiful clear brook, and, following its rapid course, we 
came at last to a large circular plain, surrounded on all 
sides by hills and distant mountains, and covered with 
green meadows, with numerous springs and watercourses 
overgrown with reeds. Here, upon a dry acclivity, on 
which grows the brushwood, common to the hills of de'bris 
