The country extending between the Sierra de San Saba and the Rio Puerco, or Dirty River, is one of the most mournful and melancholy regions imaginable. This accursed savannah, on which bleach unrecognized skeletons, which the wind and sun strive to convert into dust, is an immense desert, broadcast with grey rocks, beneath which snakes and wild beasts have, from time immemorial, formed their lurking-place, and which only produces black shrubs and stunted larches that rise from distance to distance above the desert.