Chap. VIII. THE EOCKY MOUNTAINS. 553 
II. — Whoever has travelled from El Paso down the 
Gila to California is aware that the old road, known by 
the name of Cook's Route, in the great southern bend, 
leading to Santa Cruz, crosses several heights, all of which 
might be avoided, were the traveller not dependent on 
the few watering-places in these regions. The road would 
run round the heights near the Rio Grande, if it kept more 
to the south ; and round those farther west between the 
Guadalupe Pass and the valley of Santa Cruz, if it kept 
more to the north. In the first case, it would pass round 
the last spurs of a mountain-system lying farther north ; 
in the latter case, it would avoid the extreme promontories 
of the chains situated farther south. But even the former 
of these two systems, that farther to the north, including 
the Coppermine Mountains and the Sierra Blanca, with 
their secondary groups — independently of the fact that, 
between it and the mountains of the Guadalupe Pass, a broad 
depression of the table-land exists — cannot well be regarded 
as belonging to the Rocky Mountains. It forms a group 
separated from the last chains of that system by another 
depression occupying the space between the Little Colorado 
and the Rio Grande, and containing the sources of the 
Gila. JSTor would it affect the principal question if we should 
find reasons for supposing the mountains near Socorro, 
which rise in picturesque forms on the west side of the 
Rio Grande, to belong to the system of the Rocky Moun- 
tains, as the heights which extend between Valverde and 
Santa Barbara on that side find their continuation east 
of the river, forming that series of narrows which oblige 
the traveller to leave the valley, and pass through the ill- 
reputed Jornada del Muerto, or Dead Man's Journey, in 
which, in the dry season, not a drop of water is met with 
for ninety miles. 
