Our next camping place deserving of mention was _Fray Cristóbal_, which, like many others on the route, is neither town nor village, but a simple isolated point on the river-bank--a mere _parage_, or camping-ground. We had already passed San Pascual, El Contadero, {72} and many others, and we could hear Aleman, Robledo, and a dozen such spoken of on the way, leading the stranger to imagine that the route was lined with flourishing villages. The arriero will tell one to hasten--"we must reach San Diego before sleeping." We spur on perhaps with redoubled [Pg152] vigor, in hopes to rest at a town; but lo! upon arriving, we find only a mere watering-place, without open ground enough to graze the _caballada_. Thus every point along these wilderness highways used as a camping-site, has received a distinctive name, well known to every muleteer who travels them. Many of these _parages_, without the slightest vestige of human improvement, figure upon most of the current maps of the day as towns and villages. Yet there is not a single settlement (except of very recent establishment) from those before mentioned to the vicinity of El Paso, a distance of near two hundred miles. We arrived at Fray Cristóbal[103] in the evening, but this being the threshold of the famous _Jornada del Muerto_, we deemed it prudent to let our animals rest here until the following afternoon. The road over which we had hitherto been travelling, though it sometimes traverses upland ridges and undulating sections, runs generally near the border of the river, and for the most part in its immediate valley: but here it leaves the river and passes for nearly eighty miles over a table-plain to the eastward of a small ledge of mountains, whose western base is hugged {73} by the circuitous channel of the Rio del Norte. The craggy cliffs which project from these mountains render the eastern bank of the river altogether impassable. As the direct route over the plain is entirely destitute of water, we took the precaution to fill all our kegs at Fray Cristóbal, and late in the afternoon we finally set out. We generally find a great advantage in travelling through these arid tracts of land in the freshness of the evening, as the mules suffer less from thirst, and move [Pg153] on in better spirits--particularly in the season of warm weather.