Barranca

“ The view which burst upon us, as, escaping from the ravine of the Desierto, we gained a projecting woody knoll on the side of the mountain, impending over the great barranca before mentioned, was of matchless magnificence. The day had been altogether cloudless; but during our ascent, the sun shone too brightly; and a rich purple haze had thrown a kind of veil over the more distant parts of the plain, and the great chain to the eastward. ”

“ The Barranca was so deep, so vast in scale, that he grew dizzy in following with his eye the tiny zigzag of the trail down, down, till it was lost in blue haze through which even the giant ceibas and tall cedars showed like microscopic plants. Across the valley, miles away, naked mountains tossed and tumbled, seamed, scarred, gashed by slide and quake, sterile and desolate, as on the far day that some world convulsion raised them out of the sea.
“Drunk! drunk!” Billy breathed, at last. “Nature gone on a jag. Drunken mountains loose in a crazy world. The whole earth is turned on edge. ”

“ Near to this village is a convenient port and landing place, called de la Barranca, and about a mile to the northward of the village is the river de la Barranca. During the rainy months, in the mountainous districts of the interior, it is so filled with water, that its passage is attended with considerable danger without the assistance of the chimbadoros, ferrymen. The bottom is very stony, which also occasions much danger, if the horses are not sure-footed and accustomed to ford rivers. ”

“ We passed an occasional poor hut—a chance Indian passed us—showed his white teeth, and, in spite of the load on his back, contrived to draw his hat off his matted locks, and give us a mild good morrow—but for the rest, from Dan to Beersheba, from Toluca to La Gabia, all was barren. By twelve o'clock we might have fancied ourselves passing over the burning plains of Mesopotamia, notwithstanding an occasional cold breeze which swept across us for a moment, serving only to make us feel the heat with greater force. Then barranca followed barranca. ”

“ Six of us again started, leaving our horses as before. We stole silently along, keeping among the willows, and as near as possible to the banks of the rivulet. In this way we travelled about a mile and a half. We saw then that we were near to the end of the barranca. We could hear a noise like the sound of a waterfall. We guessed that it must be a cataract formed by the stream, where it leaped into the strange ravine that already began to expand before our faces. ”

“ But by noon the whole range has apparently lost its lines and shrunken in size. Under the beating rays of the sun and surrounded by wavering heated atmosphere its shadow masses have been grayed down, neutralized, perhaps totally obliterated; and the long mountain surface appears as flat as a garden wall, as smooth as a row of sand-dunes. There is no indication of barranca or canyon. The air has a blue-steel glow that muffles light and completely wrecks color. Seen through it the escarpments show only dull blue and gray. All the reds, yellows, and pinks of the rocks are gone ”

“ 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. ”

“ Word came to the administrador yesterday that the gringo dam is greatly endangered by warm rains that have added the volcano’s snows to the flood. A hundred feet deep, the waters are pouring down the Barranca de Tigres, and if they once top it the dam will go.” He uttered a bitter oath. “A curse on it! If it were not that the wave would sweep the valley clean I would send one to hasten the end with a charge of powder. But that must wait for the dry season. I go now with every man and mule I can muster to raise and strengthen it. ”

“ Even our immediate surroundings, which appeared so squalid the night before, became transformed under the brilliant sunlight: the old courtyard looked quite picturesque with the bustle of preparation for our journey; gaily-dressed washerwomen laden with bundles of clean linen trotted past the open door, and we could watch them and the line of pack-mules and Indian carriers winding down the sides of the barranca on their way to the morning market in the capital. ”

“ How they gallop! Down one sheer barranca, or cliff, and up another. The roar of loosened stone behind them. The guanaco jink and dodge and break back, always making for the highest ground in the vicinity.
The dexterity with which the horses of the hunters keep their feet is truly wonderful. They will go at full gallop anywhere, and hardly ever fall or miss their footing. There is, however, one thing which they universally dislike, and that is jumping in any of its forms. Here and there in some parts of Patagonia the pampa is cut and scored with fissures a few feet in width. ”

“ Even in one's sleep one sees the reeling, writhing mass of kicking and struggling cargueros on the white and ragged-sided barranca. [6] Got off at 10.30 and reached the River Mayo, a very small stream here, flowing through a wide valley lined by bare steep cliffs 200 feet or so in height. We are all becoming quite expert with the cargoes; Burbury and Barckhausen, and Jones and I work in pairs. The newness has now worn off the ropes, and hauling on them does not any longer cut our hands. ”

“ Long we hang above the picture. At risk of life we creep to the outermost twig, and gaze down. It stands forth a gem of its own. No rival picture intermeddleth therewith. "It is worth a journey of a thousand miles," said a distinguished traveler to me to-day, "to see the Barranca Grande and the Regla Palisades." ”

“ The children were carried on horseback by two servants; the maids were mounted in a similar manner; and after a very little delay, the whole cavalcade took the road to Tlalpujahua by the new Hacienda of the Chĭmāl, where we stopped to breakfast. Nothing can be prettier than the approach to the Real upon this side. The scenery varies at every turn in the Barranca, while the abundance of water, and the fine vigorous vegetation of the forests on the surrounding mountains, form a most delightful contrast to the monotonous plains of the Interior, by the recollection of which we were long haunted. ”

“ Such a hypothesis seemed natural in a land of earthquakes and volcanoes. But there is no trace here of any volcanic action, whether eruption or disruption. This barranca—it is the Spanish name for such a hollow—has evidently been scooped out by the action of water. The sloping plateau up which the railway rises from Viacha is an immensely thick alluvial or lacustrine deposit of earth and gravel, doubtless formed in the days when the whole region between the Eastern and Western Cordilleras formed part of a far larger Lake Titicaca. ”

“ The barranca or bluff-face is tunnelled by the parrot, and monte somewhat resembling our oak coppices clothes the sloping base that rests upon the wave. The left bank, low, flooded, and peculiarly dull- looking, is still Entre Rios, the Mesopotamia of Argentine- land.
The history and topography of Rozario have been so well and so frequently described, that I may without the imputation of idleness shirk the task. The main interest of the settlement is its prodigious growth. In 1850 it was a miserable hamlet of mud-huts sheltering 600 souls ”

“ The ravine, or gully, which he called a barranca, had gradually changed its character. It was now more in the nature of a canyon; though there were still places where the walls, instead of towering high above their heads, sloped gradually upwards.
"Smart horses could easy climb out of here up that rise," remarked Frank, thoughtfully eyeing one of these places.
"Are you thinking that perhaps we'd better get out with our nags, while we have the chance, and leave them, while we keep up the game on foot?" asked Bob, suspecting that his chum might be considering such a move. ”

“ I’m awfully glad to know you, Mr. Seyd, though I’m puzzled yet as to how you managed to hold out. It took a whole regiment of Diaz’s rurales to establish us here, and if they were withdrawn even now we wouldn’t last long.”
Also it was worth the labor to see the dam. A huge earthen structure, nearly a hundred feet high, it spanned the Barranca just where the valley nipped in from a wide angle to a passage a quarter mile wide. Behind it a muddy lake stretched as far as the eye could reach, and while standing in the center Seyd recalled and quoted Peters’s prediction. ”

“ Another early writer, Villa-Señor y Sanchez, says that in 1712 he, with a companion, entered what seemed a cavern in a deep barranca at Teremendo, eight leagues south-west of Valladolid, or Morelia. "There were discovered prodigious aboriginal vaults, bounded by very strong walls, rendered solid by fire. In the centre of the second was a bench like the foot of an altar, where there were many idols, and fresh offerings of copal, and woolen stuffs, and various figures of men and animals." ”

“ Thus, in the Căñādă of Qŭerētărŏ, and in the famous Barranca of Rēglă, at Real del Monte, both of which are situated in the centre of the Table-land, and nearly upon the same level as the Capital, a few-hundred yards change the face of nature entirely. The luxuriancy of Tropical vegetation replaces the stunted growth peculiar to the central plateau; the birds assume a more variegated plumage; the inhabitants a more relaxed and indolent expression ”

“ I believe we were two days in going from one river to the other. . . . Hence we went to another brook, which we called de la Barranca (of the ravine) . The distance from one to the other may be estimated at two short days' journey. The direction is northeast. We then came to a river, after one day's march, which we called Rio Frio, on account of the coldness of its water. Thence we passed through fir woods, at the end of which we found cool brooks. . . . ”

“ The country is well populated, and though the people—mostly of Indian descent—live in poor huts of cane, with rice straw-thatched roofs, open all around the sides to wind and rain, and are miserably clad, they appear to have abundance to eat, and are quite well behaved, and apparently contented with their lot.
Twenty-five miles from Colima, we reached the first "Barranca," a branch of the great "Barranca de Beltran," the insurmountable obstacle to the construction of a passable wagon road from the coast to Guadalajara. ”

“ The only person I see near me is Rowley, also dismounted and struggling against the stream, which is already up to our waists, and sweeps along with it huge branches and entire trees, that threaten each moment to carry us away with them, or to crush us against the rocks. We avoid these dangers, God knows how, make violent efforts to stem the torrent and gain the side of the barranca; although, even should we succeed, it is so steep that we can scarcely hope to climb it without assistance. And whence is that assistance to come? Of the Mexicans we see or hear nothing. ”

“ The position they occupy is a naturally strong one, and would offer great facilities for defence, but there is nothing especially characteristic of a fortress about the buildings themselves.
After leaving this hill a walk of about two hundred yards brings one to the edge of the barranca and to the narrow natural causeway by which alone the city or stronghold of Utatlan could be approached. ”

“ Fortunately it was bright daylight when we found ourselves crossing a barranca, so dangerous, that after following for some time the precipitous course of the mountain path, we thought it advisable to get off our horses, who were pawing the slippery rock, without being able to find any rest for the soles of their feet. We had a good deal of difficulty in getting along ourselves on foot among the loose, sharp stones, and the horses, between sliding and stumbling, were a long while in accomplishing the descent. ”

“ 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 cañon. 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. ”

“ This town was officially known as San Carlos de Barrancas, that being the original application to the locality of the Spanish word barranca, signifying broken, in the sense in which the term is applied to a landscape.
Folch’s purpose in laying out the town was, to substitute it for Pensacola, as the chief town and capital of the province. Of the real motives which prompted the design no information can be obtained. His scheme was defeated, however, by his inability to procure for it the royal approval; the probable result of an appeal to the King by the inhabitants of Pensacola. ”

“ Ascending the slope we crossed the higher bench, a barren, dreary waste, for about a league, until we came to a lagoon covered with upland geese, and lying just below what may be termed the barranca of the Upper Pampa. Halting here for a smoke and warm to dispel the effects of the intensely cold wind, we were about resuming our route to ascend the steep slope of the upper plains, when large columns of smoke, in answer to the signal fire we had left behind us, rose up to the sky in a N.E. direction. ”

“ The skin of an aguarra killed on the premises was also shown to me, but I had not the good fortune to see one alive. The rarity of the animal causes the skins to be highly valued, being worth 5l. each in Carmen.
From the second Guardia a short gallop past the advanced barrancas, near which the river flows in another bend, brings the traveller to another wide plain, which to the north runs up into an abra deeply recessed in the receding barranca: in this there are several farms ”