OCR Text |
Show 298 little grassy valleys. From the acclivity on the southeast side of this meadow- basin, looking toward the northwest, a magnificent view of the range is gained, begiuning in the rounded contours of the lower divide to the south of Costilla Pass, and sweeping thence round into the north-northwest, where it culminates in the lofty peaks of the Vermejo Mountains. A little to the south of northwest, the snow- clad summits of the Gulebra Mountains just appear in a low depression in the watershed; to the south of which, and occupying a re- entering angle in the watershed to the westward, the Costilla Peak is seen in profile, a massive ridge gradually culminating in a lofty cone, which appears to be suddenly broken down to the northward in a nearly vertical wall of a thousand feet or more. To the northward, and extending eastward across the open space, lies the comparatively low ridge of the Raton Hills, flanked by mesa- like ridges, which form a marked barrier along the east margin of the park- basin. In the foreground, a long line of table- topped Tertiary hills hide from view the " hog- back" ridges which lie parallel to the range. These low mesa- hills constitute a marked characteristic in the topography of the parks. They are apparently made up of arenaceous shales and sandstones, in quite horizontal position, and of various levels, as though they owe their configuration to aqueous denudation. Indeed, these low table- hills present the same contours, though on a much diminished scale, which prevail in the great escarpment- outcrop bordering the basin of the Canadian, in which a thousand feet thickness of the Tertiary and Upper Cretaceous deposits are revealed. In their declivities are occasionally encountered monumental outliers of sandstone, and it seems not improbable the region may prove fertile in these lesser and singular freaks of atmospheric denudation. The pebbles and bowlders, of which the thin sheet of drift spread over these bills is largely composed, are perceptibly less smoothly abraded than the coarser materials which have been transported to the lower portions of the valleys, and which were derived from the same sources in the mountains immediately to the west. Wherever these deposits have been removed from the upland tracts, as is often the case over large areas, the disintegration of the subjacent micaceous shales aud sandstone has produced a light loamy soil, which supports a fair growth of herbage. In the lower levels, or low benches, the soil is mixed with a large percentage of ferrugiuous fragments; aud in the little intervales along the streams, as well as in the meadows occupying the larger valley-expansions, considerable tracts of exceedingly fertile, dark, finely- comminuted soil frequently occur. These little valleys peuetrate far iuto the base of the neighboring range, where they are unexpectedly encountered, often of limited extent, but always surpassingly beautiful nooks, with clean, verdure clothed surfaces and pine- fringed slopes. From the camp near the gorge by which the main branch of the Vermejo enters the Tertiary plateau- a charming spot, nestled between the wooded declivity which forms the eastern rim of the parkbasinandthe low mesas rising out of the basin, opening out iuto a little park jnstto the south, with glimpses of the glistening crests of the Costilla and Vermejo Peak8- the trail strikes across the park in a westerly direction, gaining the crest of the massive hog- back ridge in a distance of some three miles. The eastern declivity is paved with the angular blocks of the reddish- gray quartzitic rock which outcrops in the crest, where it shows a steep inclination to the northwestward, or nearly vertical. This is the great dike- like ridge of the lower sandstone of the Cretaceous, which constitutes so marked and persistent a topographical feature along the eastern foot of the Kocky Mountains for several hundred nn> 8' |