After leaving Las Palomas our course lay southward across a high _mesa_, or table-land, until we reached the Boca Grande River. The scenery along the Boca Grande is picturesque and somewhat peculiar. The river bottom is flat, very wide, and rich in soil; but on the flanks rise the Mexican mountains sheer out of the plains. To the west are the Sierra Madres, covered with snow on the highest peaks, making some of the most beautiful views I have ever seen as presented from different points along the river's course. One of them, Pacheco Peak, in the Boca Grande range (named after the Mexican Minister of the Interior), is shown in the illustration. Slight spurs and _mesa_ lands extend from the sierras in the valleys and often reach the river bank, thereby forcing the road over them, but affording a foundation that any macadamized highway in our own country might emulate. Some of these ridges were ornamented with groupings of cactus (of the oquetilla variety), if their presence can be called an ornament. Imagine a dozen fishing rods, from ten to fifteen feet in length, all radiating from a central point like a bouquet of bayonets, and each rod holding hundreds of spikes throughout its length. You will thus have a faint idea of the appearance of a bunch of oquetilla cactus. These bunches seem to prefer growing along the rocky crests in rows of tolerable regularity that, to a person at a distance, suggest the work of human hands. [Illustration: OQUETILLA CACTUS.] We traveled some thirty miles along the river without seeing a living thing except a few jack rabbits and coyotes, when suddenly we rounded a bend of the beautiful Boca Grande and came upon a stretch of valley covered with zacaton grass, and which in a few years will be a valuable ranche. Across this we saw two as hard-looking characters approaching us as ever cut a throat. I was preparing to hand over to them all my Mexican money and other valuables when they politely touched their hats and simply said, "Documentos." Here, again, in the far-off woods and hills were more customhouse officials. These men were here to prevent smugglers from crossing the border between the towns and established highways. We lunched that day on Espia Hill, used formerly as a customhouse post of observation, but the Apache chief Geronimo, raiding through here, collected a poll tax of one scalp apiece, and since then the post has been abandoned. A short distance further the river changes from the Boca Grande to the Casas Grandes.