It was now on the western side of the Sierra de Chusca, in the rude, barren country over which Fort Defiance stands sentry. Ever since the second day after leaving San Isidore it had been on the great western slope of the continent, where every drop of water tends toward the Pacific. The pilgrims would have had cause to rejoice could they have travelled as easily as the drops of water, and been as certain of their goal. But the rivers had made roads for themselves, and man had not yet had time to do likewise. The great central plateau of North America is a Mer de Glace in stone. It is a continent of rock, gullied by furious rivers; plateau on plateau of sandstone, with sluiceways through which lakes have escaped; the whole surface gigantically grotesque with the carvings of innumerable waters. What is remarkable in the scenery is, that its sublimity is an inversion of the sublimity of almost all other grand scenery. It is not so much the heights that are prodigious as the abysses. At certain points in the course of the Colorado of the West you can drop a plumb line six thousand feet before it will reach the bosom of the current; and you can only gain the water level by turning backward for scores of miles and winding laboriously down some subsidiary cañon, itself a chasm of awful grandeur. Our travellers were now amid wild labyrinths of ranges, and buttes, and cañons, which were not so much a portion of the great plateau as they were the _débris_ that constituted its flanks. Although thousands of feet above the level of the sea, they still had thousands of feet to ascend before they could dominate the desert. Wild as the land was, it was thus far passable, while toward the north lay the untraversable. What course should be taken? Coronado, who had crimes to commit and to conceal, did not yet feel that he was far enough from the haunts of man. As soon as possible he must again venture a push northward. But not immediately. The mules were fagged with hard work, weak with want of sufficient pasture, and had suffered much from thirst. He resolved to continue westward to the pueblas of the Moquis, that interesting race of agricultural and partially civilized Indians, perhaps the representatives of the architects of the Casas Grandes if not also descended from the mound-builders of the Mississippi valley. Having rested and refitted there, he might start anew for the San Juan. Thus far they had seen no Indians except the vagrants who had robbed Phineas Glover. But they might now expect to meet them; they were in a region which was the raiding ground of four great tribes: the Utes on the north, the Navajos on the west, the Apaches on the south, and the Comanches on the east. The peaceful and industrious Moquis, with their gay and warm blankets, their fields of corn and beans, and their flocks of sheep, are the quarry which attracts this ferocious cavalry of the desert, these Tartars and Bedouin of America.