The route directly south from Alamosa is across a well-watered country, but there is nothing of particular interest in the way of scenery until the town of Barranca is reached, where the road strikes the Rio Grande. Out of a level plain the train now dashes into deep gorges, and winds along the banks of a stream that is justly celebrated for the wild and rugged pageantry of mountains which it pierces. Comanche Cañon bursts into view, a glorious revelation of chaos, whose cliffs of marl and basaltic rock have tried in vain to arrest the energy and daunt the skill of civil engineers. As a consequence, their sides are rent and bored into cuts and tunnels, until the mountains of stone are made to acknowledge man’s sovereignty. Fifteen miles south of Barranca is Espanola, a quaint old Spanish town, whose chief interest, however, lies in the fact that it is the nearest railroad point to some of the most interesting pueblos and cliff ruins that are to be found in New Mexico. The Indian adobes in this vicinity, which claim the largest attention of the anthropologist, are those of San Juan, Santa Clara and San Idelfonso, all situated within three or four miles of Espanola. At Santa Clara are also the ruins of cliff dwellings, relics of the habitations of a race that exists no longer, save in uncertain traditions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: THROUGH THE BLACK CAÑON OF GUNNISON RIVER.—A deep and majestic gorge is Black Cañon, a vast rift in the mountain range where a mad river goes cantering through, here mild flowing where the cañon spreads, there tumultuous and impetuous where the great bluffs push their rugged feet against the stream and narrow the channel. Black Cañon is so called because at places the walls run up vertically and almost touch their heads, so nearly excluding the sunlight that the gorge is quite dark even at noonday, inexpressibly sombre when the sky is overcast, and weirdly awful when storms break, or night shrouds it with a pall. Photographs cannot be satisfactorily made of the dark places in the cañon, and the view herewith accordingly pictures the end near Cimmaron Station. ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: WEAPONS AND UTENSILS OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS.]