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Show 242 WESTERN WILDS. mon an oasis of some twelve square miles. Closely tended it produces amazingly. Wooden plows were running, breaking up the ground for late crops, and on the adjoining hills I saw large herds of sheep and goats attended by young Pueblos. Crossing this oasis we entered another broad canon, which we fol-lowed for some ten miles to the town of Cubero, somewhat better than the ordinary Mexican hamlet. It is built on a series of shelving rocks ; some of the dwellings are of stone, nearly all have stone floors, and the place seemed literally basking in the fierce rays of a New Mexican sun. There we found another party of Pueblos on a general spree. One able- bodied " buck" was staggering along the street, his wife after him and occasionally thwacking him on the head or back with the butt end of a heavy whip, while the whole Mexican population looked on laughing and cheering. Thence we crossed another small oasis, traversed another rugged canon, and came out upon another small green tract, and to McCarty's ranche, where we spent the night. McCarty is an Irishman, married to a Mexican woman, whom I found superior to most of her class. Beyond McCarty's is a fertile valley, through which runs the line of the Thirty- fifth Par-allel Road ; and beyond that a gorge, not more than two hun-dred yards wide, opens into an-other valley. The last three miles of the former valley is mostly marsh, and thither the officers from Wingate often go to hunt ducks. At the west end rise the springs which water the val-ley. They, boil out from under the rock, half a dozen streams of cold, clear water. But a few rods from them the lava beds begin. As I walked over the pldin, it looked as if the lava had just cooled. I could see all the little waves and ripples in its surface, and near the springs it had evidently overflowed in successive layers, each an inch or so thick, the lower cooling a little before the one above it was de-posited. In places these layers had been broken directly across, folded and contorted, leaving singular gaps and fissures, the sides of which appeared coated in places with lime or sulphur, and in others by what looked like red sealing- wax turned to stone. Where con- " WOMAN'S RTGHTS." |