Note I'-26 — Chapter I · ITINERARY: THROUGH NEW MEXICO ON THE RIO GRANDE TO EL PASO, FEB. 27TH-MAR. 21ST, 1807.

The whole of this way is bad, being cut across by a series of arroyos or gulches making down from the San Mateo and Mimbres ranges. These mountains are a part of the general chain which Pike maps in linear continuity as one which forms the "Dividing Ridge between the Waters of Rio del Norte and those of the Gulf of California"—that is, the Continental Divide. At one point in these ranges Pike legends very conspicuously "Grand Copper Mines, worked." It is also shown on the map of Lieut.-Col. Philip St. George Cooke, of his route from the Rio Grande to the Gila, etc., in 1846-47, Ex. Doc. No. 41, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., pub. 1848; and a "view of the copper mine" forms the subject of the plate opp. p. 59 of the same volume, in Lieut. W. H. Emory's report: see also ibid., A. R. Johnston's report, pp. 577, 578 fig. The headwaters of the Rio Gila are across the divide of the Mimbres range. As the party goes down the valley of the Rio Grande, say from the Nogal arroyo or the site of the village now called San José, opposite Fra Cristobal, 6,600 feet, they have the range of the latter name on the left, or E., immediately across the river, while the San Mateo peak, 10,200 feet, towers on the N. W.