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the road passes across an arm of the Plains that is about fifteen miles wide, extending in a northwest direction, but just how far it goes in that direction I have not been able to determine.

The western boundary is a high, bold escarpment, running almost parallel with the Pecos river, and at a distance of from thirty to fifty miles away, as far down as the Horsehead crossing, where the high bluffs approach the river.

TOPOGRAPHIC FEATURES.

The high plateau of the Staked Plains is but the remnant of a plain that once extended continuously from the foot of the Guadalupe Mountain range on the west to some undetermined boundary east of the present limits of the Plains. At some time during the later Tertiary or early Quaternary epochs the strata were elevated from the northwest, and the waters of what was then an inland sea were drained off to the eastward, and made the great valley of erosion that now exists between the foot of the Plains on the east and the Cretaceous hills west of the Cretaceous formation of Eastern Texas, and also made our present river channels on the east side of the Plains.

Since the tilting of the strata the Pecos river has cut through the overlying strata, and from the foot of the mountains where it makes its entrance into the plain to Horsehead crossing the Triassic and Permian strata are exposed. In places west of the Pecos river the same formation occurs as that which constitutes the upper strata of the Staked Plains, showing that this formation was once continuous over the whole area now occupied by the broad valley of the Pecos river.

The Staked Plains is one immense level plateau, with only slight undulations, dipping gently to the southeast. The dip, however, is so small that it is almost imperceptible to general observation. The country is so level that travel which way you will you seem to be going uphill.

This plateau is cut into in places by deep canyons, that extend for miles and miles, with precipitous, perpendicular sides, without a single place where they can be descended by a man on horseback. They are from one hundred to four hundred feet in height.

The principal canyons are: Yellow House, Blanco, Mulberry and Palo Duro, with their lateral branches, yet there are many others of less length and notoriety.

West of Duro, a station on the Texas and Pacific Railroad, near the western edge of the Plains, is a range of white quartz sand hills extending northwestward for over sixty miles, and from ten to twenty miles wide. They have a general height of from ten to forty feet, and are covered with "shin oak. " These hills have evidently been made by the action of the winds. The source of the sand from which these