We stand on a barren plateau.  Lava-blocks are scattered about in confusion, while tall arborescent cacti rise between them like skeletons, and bunches of grass point upward here and there.  North of us the mesa expands in monotonous risings and swellings to the foot of a tall, exceedingly graceful cone, whose slopes are dotted with bushes of cedar and juniper.  Beyond it are dark humps, denoting by their shape that they are extinct craters.  In the distance, west of that beautiful cone, which to-day is called, and very appropriately, the Tetilla, the sinuous profile of a mountain-chain just peeps over the bleak line formed by the mesa and its various corrugations.  Nestling within its bosom rests the Rito de los Frijoles.

In the south, dense thunderclouds overhang massive peaks.  Only the base of the Sierra de Sandia, of the Old Placeres, and the numerous ranges beyond, is visible, for a heavy shower falls in that direction.  In the east a plain sweeps into view, dotted by black specks looming up from a reddish soil.  This plain rises gently to the eastward, and abuts against a tall mountain-range whose summits also are shrouded in massive clouds.

We stand on the bleak and wide mesa that interposes itself between the town of Santa Fe and the valley of the Rio Grande.  Not a living object, with the exception of wasps and beetles, can be seen; everything appears dull and dead.  The thunder roars in the distance.

And yet there is life of a higher order.  Two ravens stalk about in an earnest, dignified manner.  The birds look exceedingly and comically serious.  Their plumage glistens in the subdued light of the sun.  They look out for themselves, and care nothing for the remainder of creation.  So deeply are they imbued with a sentiment of their own exceptional position in the realm of nature, that they pay no attention to another phase of life that shows itself near by, though not conspicuously.

Over the surface of the mesa are seen here and there almost imperceptible elevations destitute of vegetation.  In these slight swellings, apertures are visible.  Out of the latter the head of a small animal occasionally protrudes, disappears again, or rises displaying a pair of shovel-like front teeth.  Then a worm-like body pushes up from below, and a yellowish figure, half squirrel, half marmot, stands erect on the hillock, and utters a sharp, squealing bark.  This barking is answered from a neighbouring protuberance.  From each hillock one of these little animals crawls down; and meeting one another half-way, they stand up facing each other, scratch and bite for a moment, then separate and return to their respective cave-dwellings.  Other similar creatures wriggle about in the vicinity; the shrill barking sounds far and near.  A colony of so-called prairie dogs dwells in the neighbourhood.