Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/615

Rh made of great blocks of adobe, and were undoubtedly built with successive terraces, like the Pueblo villages of New Mexico. The largest building must have been quite 800 feet in length by 250 in breadth. The group is the northernmost in Mexico, and is radically different from any other in the republic, though similar ruins are found in the present territory of Arizona, on the River Gila, and elsewhere. It may have been here in these very Casas Grandes that the Aztecs received their first impulse towards a migration southward, when a little bird whispered to their chief to go on; and their halting-places may perhaps be traced in the structures of stone and adobe, that extend in a long and zigzag line from one end of Mexico to the other.

It has been proposed by engineers, to conduct the mountain streams into the desert plains, and fertilize them by a system of irrigation, by canals, or else by water obtained by the sinking of artesian wells. In this basin bisected by the railroad, there is thought to be a great depth of soil, the wash from the mountain slopes through ages of erosion, which would, if irrigated, produce two crops a year. The pasturage improves as the road runs south, and at Laguna it is fair, while at Encinillas, 180 miles from El Paso, it looks very inviting. We pass within sight of the Laguna of Encinillas, or Evergreen Oaks, which is about fifteen miles long by three wide (according to the season), and has pleasant grassy shores, about which great herds of large and long-horned cattle are feeding. Jack rabbits in great number, antelopes, and coyotes skip over the plain, while birds in abundance float upon and fly over the lake. A sand storm, forcible and penetrating, burst upon us as the train entered this plain.