The White Chief

CHAPTER ONE.

Deep in the interior of the American Continent--more than a thousand
miles from the shores of any sea--lies our scene.

Climb with me yonder mountain, and let us look from its summit of snow.

We have reached its highest ridge. What do we behold?

On the north a chaos of mountains, that continues on through thirty
parallels to the shores of the Arctic Sea! On the south, the same
mountains,--here running in separate sierras, and there knotting with
each other. On the west, mountains again, profiled along the sky, and
alternating with broad tables that stretch between their bases.

Now turn we around, and look eastward. Not a mountain to be seen! Far
as the eye can reach, and a thousand miles farther, not a mountain.
Yonder dark line rising above the plain is but the rocky brow of another
plain--a _steppe_ of higher elevation.

Where are we? On what summit are we standing? On the Sierra Blanca,
known to the hunter as the "Spanish Peaks." We are upon the western rim
of the _Grand Prairie_.

Looking eastward, the eye discovers no signs of civilisation. There
_are_ none within a month's journeying. North and south,--mountains,
mountains.

Westward, it is different. Through the telescope we can see cultivated
fields afar off,--a mere strip along the banks of a shining river.
Those are the settlements of Nuevo Mexico, an oasis irrigated by the Rio
del Norte. The scene of our story lies not there.

Face once more to the eastward, and you have it before you. The
mountain upon which we stand has its base upon a level plain that
expands far to the east. There are no foot-hills. The plain and the
mountain touch, and at a single step you pass from the naked turf of the
one to the rocky and pine-clad declivities of the other.

The aspect of the plain is varied. In some places it is green, where
the gramma-grass has formed a sward; but in most parts it is sterile as
the Sahara. Here it appears brown, where the sun-parched earth is bare;
there it is of a sandy, yellowish hue; and yonder the salt effervescence
renders it as white as the snow upon which we stand.