"Who is your hunter?" asked the officer. "I must say he is a devilish
bad-looking fellow."

"He is one of the best hunters Garcia ever had," replied the Mexican. "He
is one of your own people. You ought to like him."

Further journeying brought with it topographical adventures. The country
into which they were penetrating is one of the most remarkable in the
world for its physical peculiarities. Its scenery bears about the same
relation to the scenery of earth in general, that a skeleton's head or a
grotesque mask bears to the countenance of living humanity. In no other
portion of our planet is nature so unnatural, so fanciful and extravagant,
and seemingly the production of caprice, as on the great central plateau
of North America.

They had left far behind the fertile valley of the Rio Grande, and had
placed between it and them the barren, sullen piles of the Jemez
mountains. No more long sweeps of grassy plain or slope; they were amid
the _débris_ of rocks which hedge in the upper heights of the great
plateau; they were struggling through it like a forlorn hope through
_chevaux-de-frise_. The morning sun came upon them over treeless ridges of
sandstone, and disappeared at evening behind ridges equally naked and
arid. The sides of these barren masses, seamed by the action of water in
remote geologic ages, and never softened or smoothed by the gentle
attrition of rain, were infinitely more wild and jagged in their details
than ruins. It seemed as if the Titans had built here, and their works had
been shattered by thunderbolts.

Many heights were truncated mounds of rock, resembling gigantic platforms