barren country over which Fort Defiance stands sentry. Ever since the
second day after leaving San Isidore it had been on the great western
slope of the continent, where every drop of water tends toward the
Pacific. The pilgrims would have had cause to rejoice could they have
travelled as easily as the drops of water, and been as certain of their
goal. But the rivers had made roads for themselves, and man had not yet
had time to do likewise.

The great central plateau of North America is a Mer de Glace in stone. It
is a continent of rock, gullied by furious rivers; plateau on plateau of
sandstone, with sluiceways through which lakes have escaped; the whole
surface gigantically grotesque with the carvings of innumerable waters.
What is remarkable in the scenery is, that its sublimity is an inversion
of the sublimity of almost all other grand scenery. It is not so much the
heights that are prodigious as the abysses. At certain points in the
course of the Colorado of the West you can drop a plumb line six thousand
feet before it will reach the bosom of the current; and you can only gain
the water level by turning backward for scores of miles and winding
laboriously down some subsidiary cañon, itself a chasm of awful grandeur.

Our travellers were now amid wild labyrinths of ranges, and buttes, and
cañons, which were not so much a portion of the great plateau as they were
the _débris_ that constituted its flanks. Although thousands of feet above
the level of the sea, they still had thousands of feet to ascend before
they could dominate the desert. Wild as the land was, it was thus far
passable, while toward the north lay the untraversable. What course should
be taken? Coronado, who had crimes to commit and to conceal, did not yet
feel that he was far enough from the haunts of man. As soon as possible he
must again venture a push northward.