Spanish substrate/A

[Rick Mc Callister]

>Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:

>>	In Spanish, it's called a <cajo/n> [which also means garbage
>>can/truck, among other things], hence the town of El Cajo/n.
>>	Box canyons figured in most westerns filmed in Arizona, so if
>>you've seen John Wayne movies, you've seen plenty of them. They're the
>>places where the bad guys are usually holed up in. At least in the films,
>>they're canyons that have only one entrance, which is narrow with steep
>>walls. They widen out inside and often have a bit of a flood plain where
>>farming is possible.
>>	I'd imagine there'd be quite a few of them in parts of southern and
>>eastern Spain where smaller streams flow down from the plateau.

>As to Artesa de Segre, and as one who nearly drowned there once
>[I must have been 10 or so], I must say it's not really a box
>canyon in my recollection, but the river (Segre) does flow
>through mountainous territory there.  Indeed the fact that the
>waterlevel rose so quickly on the particular day of my
>near-drowning (some bozo must have opened the floodgates of the
>Oliana reservoir upstream), suggests that the valley is rather
>narrow, I think.

	Okay, maybe ravine or possibly what my folks call a "holler"
["hollow"]--they live about 2 miles up the holler on Cobb's Creek where
they grow taters and maters :>
	In any case, the v-shaped valley walls resemble the picture I saw
of an <artesa>.
	As to -esa. Could it be "valley," "wadi," "arroyo"? Any ideas?