Excerpt from To California and Back: A Book of Practical Information for Travelers to the Pacific Although your introduction is by way of a long tunnel, followed by a winding mountain pass down whose steep incline the train rushes as if to regain the low level from which the journey was begun, you will find New Mexico a territory in the sky. If its mountain ranges were leveled smoothly over its valleys and plains, the entire area of more than I square miles would stand higher above the sea than the summit of any peak of the Catskills or the Adirondacks. Its broad upland plains, that stretch to a horizon where wintry peaks tower high above the bold salients off gray-mottled foothills, themselves lie at an altitude that in the eastern States must be sought among the clouds, and at no time will you fall much below an elevation of feet in traversing the portion of the Territory that lies along the present route. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.