Chapter Sixty Four.
A Sylvan Scene.
Perhaps no river on all the North American continent is marked with interest more romantic than that which attaches to the Rio Grande of Mexico. On its banks has been enacted many a tragic scene—many an episode of Indian and border war—from the day when the companions of Cortez first unfurled Spain’s pabellon till the Lone Star flag of Texas, and later still the banner of the Stars and Stripes, became mirrored on its waves.
Heading in the far-famed “parks” of the Rocky Mountains, under the name of Rio Bravo del Norté, it runs in a due southerly direction between the two main ranges of the Mexican “Sierre Madre;” then, breaking through the Eastern Cordillera, it bends abruptly, continuing on in a south-easterly course till it espouses ocean in the great Mexican Gulf.
Only its lower portion is known as the “Rio Grande;” above it is the “Bravo del Norté.”
The Pecos is its principal tributary, which, after running through several degrees of latitude parallel to the main stream, at length unites with it below the great bend.
In many respects the Pecos is itself a peculiar river. For many hundred miles it courses through a wilderness rarely traversed by man, more rarely by men claiming to be civilised. Its banks are only trodden by the savage, and by him but when going to or returning from a raid. For this turbid stream is a true river of the desert, having on its left side the sterile tract of the Llano Estacado, on its right dry table plains that lead up to the Sierras, forming the “divide” between its waters and those of the Bravo del Norte.
On the side of the Staked Plain the Pecos receives but few affluents, and these of insignificant character. From the Sierras, however, several streams run into it through channels deeply cut into the plain, their beds being often hundreds of feet below its level. While the plateau above is often arid and treeless, the bottom lands of these tributaries show a rich luxuriant vegetation, here and there expanding into park-like meadows, with groves and copses interspersed.
On the edge of one of these affluents, known as the Arroyo Alamo (Anglice “Cottonwood Creek”), two tents are seen standing—one a square marquee, the other a “single pole,” of the ordinary conical shape.