But the woman with whom he had been living had now to be provided with another husband.  Who would take her?  The judge addressed the question to a young man, a mere boy, standing near by, and he replied that he would marry her, if she were willing.  She said yes, so he sat down beside her.  Their hands were placed together, the gobernador said a few admonishing words to them, and they rose, man and wife, duly married.  How was this for rapid transit to matrimonial bliss?

The next day the guide took us up along some higher ridges, and after ten or twelve miles of slow ascent, we arrived at the summit of Barranca de Cobre, where we made a comfortable camp about half a mile back of the point at which the track descends into the canon.  Here we had an inspiring view; deep gorges and ravines, the result of prolonged weathering and erosion, gashing the country and forming high ridges, especially toward the south and west.  In other words, here we observed for the first time barrancas, which from now on form an exceedingly characteristic feature of the topography of the Sierra Madre.  These precipitous abysses, which traverse the mighty mass of the sierra like huge cracks, run, as far as Sierra Madre del Norte is concerned, mainly from east to west.  In the country of the Tarahumare, that is to say, the State of Chihuahua, there are three very large barrancas.  They are designated as Barranca de Cobre, Barranca de Batopilas, and Barranca de San Carlos.  The Sierra Madre del Norte runs at an altitude of from 7,000 to 8,000 feet, at some points reaching even as high as 9,000 feet.  It rises so gradually in the east, for instance, when entered from the direction of the city of Chihuahua, that one is surprised to be suddenly almost on top of it.  The western side, however, falls off more or less abruptly, and presents the appearance of a towering, ragged wall.  In accordance with this general trait of the mountain system, the beginnings of the barrancas in the east are generally slight, but they quickly grow deeper, and before they disappear in the lowlands of Sinaloa they sometimes reach a depth of from 4,000 to 5,000 feet.  Of course, they do not continue equally narrow throughout their entire length, but open up gradually and become wider and less steep.

Besides these large barrancas, which impede the traveller in the highlands and necessitate a course toward the east, there are innumerable smaller ones, especially in the western part of the range, where large portions of the country are broken up into a mass of stupendous, rock-walled ridges and all but bottomless chasms.  A river generally flows in the barrancas between narrow banks, which occasionally disappear alltogether, leaving the water to rush between abruptly ascending mountain sides.