Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/391

 Rh two. It is well named La Angostura (The Narrows). Its rock forms are very remarkable, especially those on the left, or toward the west. They rise in huge castellated shapes, not unlike the basaltic columns near Velasquo. The range is five hundred to a thousand feet high, and full of surprises in its angles no less than its striated surface. The opposite side is higher, and more after the usual form of mountains.

Between these ranges is a deep dry river-bed that has cut its crooked way through the valley, and scooped out a path twenty feet below the original level, and present roadway of the valley. This barranca chico, as they would call it, or little ravine, is not an unusual sight in the country. The hill-sides west of the capital exhibit some of great depth. But this one differs from any I had previously seen in that it is exclusively and evidently a river-bed, and probably is a river itself in the rainy season.

On the eastern side of the narrow valley there are several moraines, as seemingly artificial as is the river barranca. If the one is scooped out by violent action of the elements, the other is heaped up by like violent action. They are as high as the bed of the river is deep. They extend from near the river's edge to the side of the tall rock-hills. How they were cast up is not evident. There are no glaciers to make them, as in the Alpine moraine. They can not have been tossed up from the bed of the river, for they have no connection with the stream. Riding past them, I could not solve their cause. Perhaps some scholarly soldier, who fought on them and under them, may be acquainted with their origin.

They had a use that day. On their summits were placed the American cannon, which did no little to carry the field. Perhaps it was on one of them that the famous order was given, "A little more grape, Captain Bragg," an order which strengthened the American heart, and so helped gain the day.

The battle was fought on this strange field. Along that dry gulf General Taylor's troops made their perilous pause; on these seemingly manufactured hill tops they planted their guns. There