For some miles I walked through such a region, growing momentarily thirstier as the sun beat down upon me and I inhaled the alkali with the sensation of having eaten soap. The only sign of habitation that I saw was a shanty, a mere shell of boards tacked upon a frame and standing ten feet square, perhaps, and seven feet high. The hill on which it stood sloped to a deep ravine, and past the shanty door wound a smaller water-course, where a line of scrub-oaks grew, suggesting the presence of a spring. But the bed was dry and yawned in thirsty cracks, and no source of water could I find, although the shanty was plainly inhabited; for the door was heavily padlocked, and a half-starved dog, with a broken leg, limped from his kennel among some old soap-boxes and barked a feeble protest against my approach, and a few fowls were squatting in the dust in the shade of the scrub-oaks, or scratching for food in the dry grass near the shanty. Two or three miles farther on I came out upon a highway, which follows the general direction of the Santa Fé and the Rio Grande railways, as they parallel each other to the south. Here was a very different tale to tell. There were many ranches along the route with abundant supplies of water from artesian wells, apparently, whose streams were playing ceaselessly over gardens and at the roots of thrifty fruit-trees. I passed through a number of typical Western villages on the march, and once through an encampment of a regiment of regulars, whose officers were at mess and many of the men lying at full length on the ground with their legs protruding from under the slight shelter tents, while foraging expeditions could be seen bargaining among their out-houses with the neighboring ranchmen, with all the womenkind and children in interested attendance.