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Updated: June 3, 2025
In many places on these table-lands there are deep rifts called "canons," or more properly "barrancas," that have probably been formed by running water during rain-storms. These are often dry, and look like vast fissures opening down into the earth often for a thousand feet or more and extending away for scores of miles across the prairie.
Then the mahogany-trees, the chicozapotes, and again in the barrancas the candelabra-like cactuses, and higher up the knotted and majestic live oak. An incessant change of plants, trees, and climate. We had been five hours in the saddle, and had already changed our climate three times; passed from the temperate zone, the tierra templada, into the torrid heat of the tierra muy caliente.
Fort Barrancas had evidently opened fire in response to the rocket, which had no doubt been sent up as a signal to notify the garrison that a vessel was going out or coming in, and that her movements were not regular. The first shot was followed by others, and a shot dropped into the water near the Teaser. "Let the leadsmen sound, Beeks," said Christy.
The captain had his orders, to be opened about this time; and I should have supposed you were going into the bay to shell out Fort Barrancas." "You could hardly have supposed that a little gunboat like the Bronx was sent all alone on such a mission." "I obey my orders without question, and I should not have suspected anything was out of the way.
There are vast caves piercing the sides of the mountains, and deep chasms opening into the plains some of them so deep, that you might fancy mountains had been scooped out to form them. They are called "barrancas."
For it is round and has deep folds or barrancas in it, running from its highest point in the middle. Like all the other islands it is a volcanic ash pile, or fire and cinder heap, cut and scarped by its rain storms of winter till all valleys seem to run to the centre.
Under other circumstances the sight would have been to me appalling; but my nerves were strung by the protracted agony I had been forced to endure. The precipice on whose verge I sat formed a side of one of those yawning gulfs common in Spanish America, and known by the name barrancas. It seemed as if a mountain had been scooped out and carried away.
The mountain-slopes which descend from the Sierra Madre eastward toward the sea are furrowed by barrancas deep ravines with perpendicular sides, and with streams flowing at the bottom. But here all these barrancas run almost due east and west, so that our journey from Vera Cruz to Mexico was made, as far as I can recollect, without crossing one. Now, the case was quite different.
It is only here and there that even such paths can be made, for the walls of rock are generally too steep even for any vegetation, except grass and climbing plants in the crevices. Our half-hour's ride, as we supposed it would be, would often extend to two or three hours, for on these slopes two or three barrancas large and small -have sometimes to be crossed within as many miles.
That ancient town, renowned in Moorish warfare, is situated in one of the roughest passes of the Serrania de Ronda. It is built round the craggy cone of a hill, on the lofty summit of which is a strong castle. The country around is broken into deep barrancas or ravines, some of which approach its very walls.
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