Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/279

 Apache encampment, over a vast plain with nothing to relieve its monotony but an occasional glimpse of what looked like the gleaming waters of a vast inland sea, though it turned out to be the great mirage known as Greenhorn's Lake.

COCHISE.

Beyond the plains the travelers came to a mass of "cañons, ravines, ridges, gullies, chasms, and mountains," some of them presenting the appearance of exquisitely constructed Gothic cathedrals, while one so exactly resembled an organ, with pipes of green, white, blue, brown, and pink sandstone, that Cozens could scarcely believe it to be merely a natural phenomenon.

The Indian trail led into the very midst of this chaos of rocks, and, breathlessly following his guide, our hero presently found himself upon the edge of a pass, looking down a precipice two thousand feet in depth, with perpendicular walls of a blood-red color, relieved at their summits with patches of grayish white alkali. Cochise now made signs to his employer—master Cozens could scarcely be called—to dismount and leave his mule to find its own way down. Then with one word, "Adelante!" (Forward!), he led the way down the pass.

Descending into the gloom beneath the overhanging rock-masses, and feeling their way step by step in the darkness, with the mules so close behind them that a moment's hesitation would have been certain death—for the animals would assuredly have pushed their masters over the abyss—the adventurers at last reached in safety the bed of the river, which had eaten out the pass of which they had availed themselves. Here a halt was made for the night, and on the ensuing day the descent of the ravine was completed, under difficulties even greater than those already conquered.