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 _debris_ 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.