could be as corre

ct, possibly, as som
e of t he accounts given by the
Spanish possesse
d of romanticism

. But how cl

ose were the explorers to Hidden Valley, the like of which they would never again be able to see! They stayed clear of the mountains and kept to the valleys. In all of their travels and wanderings, the Spanish kept out of the watershed between the Jemez Mountain Range and the Rio Grande Valley. It is today known as the Pajarito (little bird) Plateau. The Cauada de Cochiti is its southern boundary, not far from the pueblo of Cochiti. The Rio Grande bounds it on the east the Rio Chama on the north and the Jemez Mountains on the west. The entire plateau is made up of deposits of soft volcanic ash, known as tuff, and deposits of black basalt. Geologists tell us that all this happened an inconceivably long time agoÑthree million years let us say, in geological times known as the Pliocene and Pleistocene Today the Pajarito Plateau is a profusion of high potreros (narrow mesas), and deep canyons cut by streams and arroyos which carry off seasonal rams. Sonie of the canyons have sheer vertical cliffs of volcanic ash, hundreds of feet high in places, and this ash is soft enough to be carved and hewn into various shapes and forms. The cli

ffs are even soft enough for the wind to carve what appear to be statues which stand out as exceptional works of nature. The mesa tops are beautiful. They are covered with thick growths of pine and juniper, pifion and scrub oak. A profusion of flowers dot the landscape during the summer months, It was the Pajarito Plateau that both Coronado and Espejo failed to plunder, not because