Lake Erie was very like a whale; Lake Ontario was a seal; and Italy was a boot.
The great Chihuahuan desert is a boot too; a larger boot than Italy.
The leg of it is in Mexico, the toe is in Arizona, the heel in New Mexico; and the Jornado is in the boot-heel.
El Jornado del Muerto--the Journey of the Dead Man! From what dim old legend has the name come down?
No one knows.

The name has outlived the story.
Perhaps some grim, hard-riding Spaniard made his last ride here; weary at last of war, turned his dead face back to Spain and the pleasant valleys of his childhood.

We have a glimpse of him, small in the mighty silence; his faithful few about him, with fearful backward glances; a gray sea of waving grama breaking at their feet; the great mountains looking down on them.

Plymouth Rock is unnamed yet .-- Then the mist shuts down.
The Santa Fe Trail reaches across the Jornado; tradition tells of vague, wild battles with Apache and Navajo; there are grave-cairns on lone dim ridges, whereon each passer casts a stone.

Young mothers dreamed over the cradles of those who now sleep here, undreaming; here is the end of all dreams.
Doniphan passed this way; Kit Carson rode here; the Texans journeyed north along that old road in '62--to return no more.
These were but passers-by.