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Show 14 BY PATH AND TRAIL. ters are a desolation of emptiness and whose sides are ripped and gashed down to the very foothills, black with lava and strewn with scoriae. Of the time when these mighty hills belched forth flame and fire, reverberated with explosive gases, and the crash of the elements that rocked the earth and sent down scoriae torrents which devoured life and overwhelmed and effaced valleys no tongue may speak. Through that part of the wonderful Sierra dividing the states of Chihuahua and Sonora, flows, through depths immeasurable to man, the Urique river, whose flow when in flood is an ungovernable tor rent, and when in repose is a fascination. Thousands of years ago the streams and rivulets formed by the thawing of the mountain snow on the Sierra ' s crests and slopes zigzagged, now here, now there searching a path to the sea. On their seaward race they were joined by innumerable recruits, springs issuing from the crevassed rocks, brooks stealing away from dark recesses, runlets, rills and streamlets, till in time the confederate waters became a formidable river which conquered opposition and fought its way to the sea. This is the Urique, and for untold ages there has been no " let up" to its merciless and tireless onslaught on the porphyritic and sandstone walls that in the dark ages challenged its right to pass on. Through these formid able barriers it has ripped a right of way, and into their breasts of adamant it has cut a frightful gash of varying width and, in places, more than a mile deep. This aw ful wound is known as the Gran Barranca, and with its weird settings amid terrifying solitudes is, perhaps, the greatest natural wonder in America. I have visited the Grand Canyon of Arizona, and am familiar with Niagara Falls and its wondrous gorge, but |