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Show 20 BY PATH AND TRAIL. The trail now becomes steeper and narrower, carrying us through an inspiring panorama of isolated mounts, huge rocks and colossal bowlders standing here and there in battlemented and castellated confusion. Stretching away to the south and extending for hundreds of miles, even to the valley of Tierra Blanca, was the great conife rous or pine forest of the Sierras Madres, the reserves of the paleto deer, the feeding grounds of the peccary or wild hog and the haunts of the mountain bear and the jaguar or Mexican spotted tiger. This great pine range is the largest virgin forest in North America, and for unnumbered ages has reposed and still reposes in its awful isolation. In the early Miocene age, when God was preparing the earth for the coming of man, this immense wilder ness was the feeding ground of mighty animals now ex tinct and, at a later period, of the fierce ancestors of those now roaming through the desolation of its solitude. The decay of forest wealth and the disintegration of its animal life eternally going on have superimposed upon the primitive soil a loam of inexhaustible richness. Un fortunately there is no water to river its timber, but when the time comes, as come it will, when its produce can be freighted, this forest will be of incalculable com mercial value to Mexico, and as profitable to the republic as are her enormously rich mines. The mountains, isolated cones and the face of the v land, as we proceeded, began to assume weird and fan tastic shapes. Wind and water chiseling, carving and cutting for thousands of years, have produced a pano-- rama of architectural deceptions bewildering to man. These soulless sculptors and carvers, following a myste rious law of origin and movement, have evolved from |