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Show CHAPTER II. ON THE WAY TO THE BARRANCA. To the traveler from the northern and eastern regions of America, Mexico is and always will be a land of en chantment. Its weird and romantic history, its unfa miliar and gorgeously flowering vines, its thorny and mysteriously protected plants called cacti, its strange tribes of unknown origin, its towering mountains, vol canoes and abysses of horrent depths prepare the mind for the unexpected and for any surprise. Still, the stag gering tales I heard here, at Guaymas, of the wonders of the Gran Barranca and the matchless scenery of the Sierra Madre gave me pause. The Sierras Madres are a range of mountains forming the backbone of Mexico, from which all the other ridges of this great country stretch away, and to which all isolated spurs and solitary mountains are related. This stupendous range of moun tains probably rose from the universal deep, like the Laurentian granites, when God said " let there be light, and light was," and will remain till the Mighty Angel comes down from heaven and " swears by Him that liv-eth forever, that time shall be no more." From the breasts and bosom of this tremendous range rise mountains of individual greatness, towering one above the other. Here are sublime peaks of imperishable material that lift their spires into ethereal space, and whose snow roofed sides receive and reflect the rays of an eternal sun. Here, also, are horrent gorges which ter rify the gaze vast abysses where there is no day and where eternal silence reigns; dead volcanoes whose era- |