Beyond Santa Fé is the Rio Grande River, which the railway follows down through a grazing country past Albuquerque, its mart for wool and hides. Turning westward an arid region is traversed, with an occasional pueblo, and near Laguna is the famous Mesa Encantada, or the "Enchanted Table Land." This eminence rises precipitously four hundred and thirty feet above the surface, and is only accessible by ladders and ropes. The summit gives evidence of former aboriginal occupancy, and the tradition of the neighboring Acomas Indians is that their ancestors lived upon it, but were forced to abandon the village when a storm had destroyed the only trail and caused those remaining on the summit to perish. To the westward the "Continental Divide" is crossed at seventy-three hundred feet elevation, but with nothing indicating the change, as it is on a plateau. The Navajo Indian Reservation is crossed, Arizona entered and traversed, and at the Flagstaff Station is the Lowell Observatory, and here the nearest route is taken to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. There rises to the northward the huge San Francisco Mountain, a fine extinct volcano, while off to the southwest are the great United Verde Copper Mines, among the largest in the world, and the town of Prescott, in a rich mineral region. The Colorado River is crossed into California, and then the railway traverses the wide Mojave Desert towards the Pacific coast. DENVER AND ITS SURROUNDINGS The Union Pacific Railway route across the Continent was the first constructed, the Government giving large subsidies in money and land grants. It was opened in 1869, and greatly encouraged travel to the Pacific coast. The Union Pacific main line starts at Council Bluffs and Omaha on the Missouri River and crosses Nebraska into Wyoming. Here is Cheyenne, a leading cattle-dealers' town on the edge of the Rockies, five hundred miles west of the Missouri, where there are fifteen thousand people. Fort Russell, an Indian outpost at the verge of the Black Hills, is to the northward. At Cheyenne, the main Union Pacific line is joined by the Denver Pacific branch, which starts on the Missouri River at Kansas City, traverses Kansas, passing Fort Riley and the Ogden Monument there, marking the geographical centre of the United States, and enters Colorado, and at Denver turns northward to Cheyenne.