The prairie yawned before them, exhibiting one of those vast fissures often met with on the high table-lands of America.

It was a _barranca_, of nearly a thousand feet in depth, sheer down into the earth, although its two edges at the top were scarcely that distance apart from each other! It lay directly across the track of the travellers; and they could trace its course for miles to the right and left, here running for long reaches in a straight line, and there curving or zig-zagging through the prairie.

When they arrived upon its brink, they saw at a glance that they could not cross it.

It was precipitous on both sides, with dark jutting rocks, which in some places overhung its bed.

There was no water in it to gladden their eyes; but, even had there been such, they could not have reached it.
Its bottom was dry, and covered with loose boulders of rock that had fallen from above.
This was an interruption which our travellers little expected; and they turned to each other with looks of dismay.