There is another class of men who traverse the Great Desert. For many years there has been a commerce carried on between the oasis of New Mexico and the United States. This commerce employs a considerable amount of capital, and a great number of men—principally Americans. The goods transported in large wagons drawn by mules or oxen; and a train of these wagons is called a “caravan.” Other caravans—Spanish ones—cross the western wing of the Desert, from Sonora to California, and thence to New Mexico. Thus, you see, the American Desert has its caravans as well as the Saära of Africa.
These caravans travel for hundreds of miles through countries in which there are no inhabitants, except the scattered and roving bands of Indians; and there are many parts on their routes so sterile, that not even Indians can exist there.
The caravans, however, usually follow a track which is known, and where grass and water may be found at certain seasons of the year. There are several of these tracks, or, as they are called, “trails,” that cross from the frontier settlements of the United States to those of New Mexico. Between one and another of these trails, however, stretch vast regions of desert country—entirely unexplored and unknown—and many fertile spots exist, that have never been trodden by the foot of man.
Such, then, my young friend, is a rough sketch of some of the more prominent features of the Great American Desert.
Let me conduct you into it, and show you—from a nearer view—some of its wild but interesting aspects. I shall not show you the wildest of them, lest they might terrify you. Fear not—I shall not lead you into danger. Follow me.
Chapter Two.
The White Peak.
Some years ago, I was one of a party of “prairie merchants,” who crossed with a caravan from Saint Louis on the Mississippi, to Santa Fé in New Mexico. We followed the usual “Santa Fé trail.” Not disposing of all our goods in New Mexico, we kept on to the great town of Chihuahua, which lies farther to the south. There we settled our business, and were about to return to the United States the way we had come, when it was proposed (as we had now nothing to encumber us but our bags of money), that we should explore a new “trail” across the prairies. We all wished to find a better route than the Santa Fé road; and we expected that such an one lay between the town of El Paso—on the Del Norte River—and some point on the frontiers of Arkansas.