Fish seemed scarce in this part of the Bavispe River; at least we did not succeed in bringing out any by the use of dynamite. We got only five little fish—one catfish, and four suckers, the largest six inches long.

On Christmas Day the black bulb thermometer rose in the sun to 150 deg. F., although that very night the temperature fell to 22.9 deg. F., a difference of nearly 130 deg.. The warmth was such that even a rattlesnake was deceived and coaxed out by it.

We made every effort to celebrate Christmas in a manner worthy of our surroundings. We could not procure fish for our banquet, but one of the Mexicans had the good luck to shoot four turkeys; and Kee, our Chinese cook, surprised us with a plum pudding the merits of which baffle description. It consisted mainly of deer fat and the remnants of dried peaches, raisins, and orange peel, and it was served with a sauce of white sugar and mescal. The appreciation of this delicacy by the Mexicans knew no bounds, and from now on they wanted plum pudding every day.

On the upper Bavispe we again found numerous traces of a by-gone race who had occupied these regions long before the Apaches had made their unwelcome appearance. In fact, all along on our journey across the sierra we were struck by the constant occurrence of rude monuments of people now long vanished. They became less numerous in the eastern part, where at last they were replaced by cave dwellings, of which I will speak later.

More than ever since we entered the Sierra de Nacori, we noticed everywhere low stone walls, similar to those we had seen in the foot-hills, and evidently the remains of small cabins. The deeper we penetrated into the mountains, the more common became these hut-walls, which stood about three feet high, and were possibly once surmounted by woodwork, or, perhaps, thatched roofs. All the houses were small, generally only ten or twelve feet square, and they were found in clusters scattered over the summit or down the slopes of a hill. On one summit we found only two ground plans in close proximity to each other.

The stones composing the walls were laid with some dexterity. They were angular, but never showed any trace of dressing, except, perhaps, by fracture. The interstices between the main stones were filled in with fragments to make the walls solid. Neither here nor in any other stone walls that we saw were there any indications of any mud or other plaster coating on the stones.

On top of a knoll in the mountains south of Nacori, at an elevation of 4,800 feet, well preserved remains of this kind of dwelling were seen. The house, consisting of but one room about ten feet square, was built of large blocks of lava. The largest of these were eighteen inches long, and about half as thick, and as wide. The walls measured about three feet in height and one foot and a half in thickness, and there was a sufficient amount of fallen stone debris near-by to admit of the walls having been once four or five feet high. There were the traces of a doorway in the northwest corner of the building. Numerous fragments of coarse pottery were scattered around, some gray and some red, but without any decoration, except a fine slip coating on the red fragments.

In the Sierra de Nacori, on the summit of a steep knoll, and at an elevation of about 6,500 feet, we found two huts of such laid-up walls. The rough felsite blocks of which they were composed were surprisingly large, considering the diminutive size of the cabins. We measured the largest block and found it to be two feet long, ten inches wide, and eight inches thick. There were many others almost as large as this one. But there was only one tier of stones left complete in place. Although there were well-built trincheras in all the surrounding arroyos, there were no traces of either tools or pottery on that hill.

On the western slope of the Sierra de Nacori, on top of another knoll, and at an elevation of 6,400 feet, we found numerous rude ground plans, some of which showed rubble walls fifteen inches thick. They formed groups of four or five apartments, each ten by twelve feet. But on the north side of that summit there was a larger plan, nearly eighteen feet square; however, the outlines of the entire settlement were not distinct enough to enable us to trace its correct outlines.

Many fragments of pottery lay about, but neither in number nor in interest could they be compared with those found near the ruins in the southwest of the United States, for instance, near the Gila River. Some of the potsherds were one-third of an inch thick, and large enough to show that they had been parts of a large jar. They were made of coarse paste, either gray or brown in colour. Some had a kind of rude finish, the marks of a coarse fibre cloth being clearly discernible on the outside. Others were primitively decorated with incisions. One sherd of really fine thin red ware was picked up, but there was no trace of ornamentation on it. We found, besides, a few cores of felsite and some shapeless flakes and several fragments of large metates.

In the valley formed between the mountains on the upper Bavispe River we met with very many such houses. The clusters which we came across seemed to have been composed of a larger number of houses. Parapets, also built of undressed stones and surrounding these villages, now became a constant feature. Even within sight of our camp was such a parapet, six feet high, and house ruins were near by. We also discovered an ancient pueblo consisting of thirty houses, all of the usual small dimensions, but not all alike in shape. Some were round, others triangular, but most of them were rectangular, measuring eight by ten feet. Along two sides of this village ran a double wall, while the other two sides were bound by a single wall constructed on the same principle. Evidently these walls were built for the protection of the people in time of war.

About five miles south of our camping place the river turns eastward, and again two miles below this point it receives a tributary from the west. One day I followed the broken cordon on its eastern bank, then turned north and ascended an isolated mountain, which rises about fifteen hundred feet high above the river. There is a small level space on top, and on this there has been built, at some time, a fortress with walls of undressed stones from two to six feet high and three feet thick. It was about fifty paces long in one direction, and about half that length in the other. Remains of houses could be traced, and inside of the walls themselves the ground plan of three little chambers could be made out.

On the Bavispe River we photographed a trinchera which was about eight feet high and thirty feet long; and one of the foremen observed one which was at least fifteen feet high.

I decided to move the camp one and a half miles down the river, and to its right bank, on a cordon, where Mason, one of my Mexican foremen, had discovered some ruins. It was very pleasant here after the rather cool bottom of the valley, which in the morning was generally covered with a heavy fog. On this ridge were many traces of former occupancy, parapet walls and rude houses divided into small compartments. The parapets were lying along the north and south faces of the houses, and just on the brink of the narrow ridge. On the south side the ridge was precipitous, but toward the north it ran out in a gentle shallow slope toward the next higher hill. The building material here is a close-grained felsite, and huge fragments of it have been used in the construction of the parapets. These boulders were, on an average, thirty-five inches long, twenty-five inches thick and fifteen inches wide; while the stones used in the house walls measured, on the average, fourteen by nine by seven inches.

On the western end of the ridge is a small house group, which, for convenience sake, I will designate as "Mason's Ruins." They showed a decidedly higher method of construction, and the walls were better preserved, than in any we had seen so far. The ground plans could be readily made out, except in a small part of the southwest corner. These walls stood three to five feet high, and the stones here too were dressed only by fracture. They were laid in gypsiferous clay, a mass of which lay close to the southwest corner. This clay is very similar to the material used by the Moquis in whitening their houses. The stones themselves were felsite, which abounds in the locality. The blocks have an average size of twelve inches square by six inches thick. It should be noted that no regard was paid to the tying of the corners and the partition walls; but considerable care had been taken in making the walls vertical, and the angles were fairly true. The walls were almost twelve inches thick, and on the inner side they had evidently never been plastered.

Being coated with some white plaster, these ruins look white at a distance, and the Mexicans therefore called them casas blancas. I heard of an extensive group of such buildings near Sahuaripa, and there are also some ruins of this category near Granados, and in the hills east of Opoto. Undoubtedly they belong to a more recent period than the rude stone structures described before. Most of the ancient remains of the Sierra are remnants of tribes that expanded here from the lowlands, and only in comparatively recent times have disappeared. I also perceived that they were built by a tribe of Indians different from those which erected the houses in the caves of the eastern and northern Sierra Madre, and in the country east of it, and may safely be ascribed to Opatas.

In spite of the rest here, the animals did not seem to improve on the grama and buffalo grass. It was rather perplexing to note that they grew weaker and weaker. The grass of the sierra, which was now gray, did not seem to contain much nourishment, and it became evident that the sooner we proceeded on our journey, the better. To save them as much as possible, we loaded only half the regular weight on the mules and donkeys, and sent them back the next day to fetch the balance of the baggage. In this way, and by strengthening the poor beasts with a judicious use of corn, I managed to pull through and overcome this most serious of all difficulties, which, at one time, threatened to paralyse the entire expedition.

On December 31st we moved up a steep zigzag trail cut out by us, and then went north and east through broken foot-hills. We got into a series of cordon mesas, but the breaks between them were not at all difficult to pass. On the mountain sides grew oaks and, higher up, pines.

The country was wild and rugged. Everywhere we encountered fallen rocks, and there was a scarcity of water. It was a kind of comfort to see now and then some trincheras in these desolate regions. At four o'clock we camped on a steep place amidst poor grass, and only a trickling of water in the bed of a little rill.

Here, at last, the men whom I had sent to Nacori for provisions overtook us, bringing eighteen dollars' worth of panoche, and two and a quarter fanegas of pinole. Measuring by fanegas was then still in vogue in Mexico; a fanega equals about sixty-four kilograms.

This, the messengers stated, was all that the women would grind for us. Twenty of them had been set to work to fill our order, and when they had laboured until their hands were tired, they declared they would grind no more; and if the caballeros in the mountains wanted further quantities, they should come and make mills of themselves. From this we judged that their tempers had risen in proportion to the heaps of pinole they were producing, and that they did not bless the day when we had come into their peaceful valley, since it meant so much hard work for them.

Though we were now provisioned for some time to come, I was anxiously looking forward to the day when we should reach the eastern side of the sierra. The animals were rapidly giving out, and it was the opinion of the packers that they could not last longer than a week; but what little corn we could spare for them each day worked wonders, and in this way we enabled them to carry us through.

The most noticeable among the plants in the valleys was the madrona or strawberry tree (Ardutus Texana) growing singly here and there. Its beautiful stem and branches, ash-grey and blood-red, are oddly twisted from the root to the top. Now and then, in this world of pine trees, we came upon patches of grama grass. We also observed pinon trees, a variety of pine with edible seeds.

Apache monuments were plentiful in this part of the sierra, and after four days of travel, on January 5, 1891, we arrived at an old Apache camping place, called by the Mexicans "Rancheria de los Apaches." It was a sheltered place, and we decided to stop again and rest, as now we could not be very far from the Mormon colonies in the eastern part of the sierra. We had, on the day before, heard a shot, which had not been fired by anyone of our party, and we had met some short-horn cattle that must have belonged to some settlers.

We halted on a bare conglomerate scalp near a little creek, which we called "Bonito," and which shortly below our camp joins the Gabilan, an affluent of the Bavispe River which probably has its origin near Chuhuichupa. The elevation of our camp was 6,620 feet. The summit of the sierra toward the east appeared to be 2,000 feet high, and the first ridge, at the foot of which we camped, rises here almost perpendicularly about a thousand feet. The little stream already mentioned originates in a deep canon and adjoining it are four large cordons descending from the ridge east of us and spreading themselves out like a gigantic fan, which we had noticed from some distance on the previous day. From our camp led a track eastward, up along one of these cordons, and a reconnoitring party found a Mormon settlement ten or twelve miles off.

The day after our arrival I went out to take a look at the country. South of us, at no great distance from the camp, I found patches of fertile black soil partly cultivated with corn and turnips that did not appear to be flourishing, and with potatoes which were doing well. An old horse stood there, and I also noticed a small tent. Going up closer I found a plough standing outside. This made quite a queer impression in these solitary mountains, but the implement was apparently not out of place, judging from the beautiful black soil near-by. In the tent I saw a heap of bed-clothes piled up on some tin pails, and there were also some pots with potatoes and corn. The owner of all this was not at home; but the atmosphere was American, not Mexican. I had evidently come upon an outpost of one of the Mormon colonies.

Throughout January the days continued to be fine, though at times a southerly cold wind was blowing; but at night it was cold and the water in our buckets was often frozen. Then we felt what a real comfort a large camp-fire is. Before sundown we would gather the fallen trees and such sorts of wood, and roaring fires were built in front of each tent. The smoke, to be sure, blackened our faces, but the fire made the tents wonderfully comfortable, filling them with light and warmth. For beds we used fragrant pine boughs.

We also had several falls of snow, the heaviest two and a half inches, and on the coldest night, on January 10th, the thermometer went down to 6 deg. F. As the rays of the sun partly melted the snow in the course of the day, the animals could at least get a meagre meal. On January 15th a cup of water froze inside of my tent, but during the day we had 57 deg. F.

We soon found out that in the river Gabilan, some four miles south of our camp, there were immense quantities of fish, which had come up to spawn. No one ever interfered with them, and their number was simply overwhelming. As the task of feeding thirty men in these wild regions was by no means a trifling one, I resolved to procure as many fish as possible, and to this end resorted to the cruel but effective device of killing them by dynamite. I trust that the scarcity of provisions in the camp will serve as my excuse to sportsmen for the method I employed. We used a stick of dynamite six inches long, and it raised a column of water twenty feet in the air, while the detonation sounded like a salute, rolling from peak to peak for miles around. In two hours three of us gathered 195 fish from a single pool. Most of them were big suckers; but we had also thirty-five large Gila trout. All were fat and of delicate flavour, and lasted us quite a long time.

Never have I been at any place where deer were so plentiful. Almost at every turn one of them might be seen, sometimes standing as if studying your method of approach. I sent out five men to go shooting in the northwesterly direction from the camp, and after a day and a half they returned with ten deer. At one time we had fifteen hanging in the kitchen.

One morning our best marksman, a Mexican named Figueroa, brought in three specimens of that superb bird, campephilus imperialis, the largest woodpecker in the world. This splendid member of the feathered tribe is two feet long; its plumage is white and black, and the male is ornamented with a gorgeous scarlet crest, which seemed especially brilliant against the winter snow. The birds go in pairs and are not very shy, but are difficult to kill and have to be shot with rifle. One of their peculiarities is that they feed on one tree for as long as a fortnight at a time, at last causing the decayed tree to fall. The birds are exceedingly rare in the museums. They are only found in the Sierra Madre. On my journeys I saw them as far south as the southernmost point which the Sierra Madre del Norte reaches in the State of Jalisco, above the Rio de Santiago. I frequently observed them also in the eastern part of the range.

Here, too, a great many specimens of the rare Mexican titmouse and some beautiful varieties of the duck tribe were procured.

A few days after our arrival at the Rancheria de los Apaches, Professor Libbey left our camp, returning to the United States by way of Casas Grandes. After bidding him good-bye, I made an excursion of a week's duration to the north of our camp, to look for possible antiquities, especially a casa blanca, of which I had heard considerable from the people in Nacori.

The woods, considering that it was midwinter, were quite lively with birds. Everywhere I saw bluejays; crested titmice, too, were plentiful, as well as crossbeaks. A large yellowish squirrel also attracted my attention. It was of the same kind as that recently found by our expedition. The country was hilly and full of small canons, and well watered by springs. Outcroppings of solidified volcanic ash looked in the distance like white patches in the landscape. We searched diligently for some twenty-five miles to the north of the main camp, and also toward the east and west, but no trace of former habitation was found except trincheras and house ruins such as we had seen before. Near one of the group of houses I saw three metates in an excellent state of preservation.

While out on this trip I was one day surprised by the appearance of a Mormon in my camp. It was really a pleasure to see someone from the outside world again; and this was a frank and intelligent man, very pleasant to talk to. He told me that he had never been farther north than where he was now; nor had he ever been farther west than the little creek about two miles west of the place where he met me, which he called the "Golden Gulch." This creek probably originates in the mountains near by; there was still another creek west of us which joined the Golden Gulch near the Mormon's tent, and this he called "North Creek." The ranch near our main camp he had taken up only about three years ago, and he considered agriculture in this region successful, especially with potatoes. Maize, too, may also ripen. Furthermore, he told me of some interesting cave dwellings near the Mormon settlement on the eastern edge of the sierra, which I decided to investigate.

When the Mormons had come to colonise parts of northern Mexico, an American called "Apache Bill," who had lived for a number of years with the Apaches, told them of a large, fertile valley showing many evidences of former cultivation. Probably he referred to a locality that had once been inhabited by a remnant of the Opata Indians, who had become christianised and had received fruit trees from the missionaries. The trees, when found, were said to be still bearing fruit, while the people had vanished—having probably been killed off by the Apaches.

I returned to the main camp, leaving, however, two men behind to search still further for the casa blanca. When they returned after a few days, they reported that nothing could be found, and that the country was difficult of access. On my return I found the men who had gone to Casas Grandes back already, bringing with them some provisions and the first mail for three months.

Two miles east of our camp obsidian was found in situ. It was not in the natural flow, but in round, water-worn pebbles deposited in the conglomerate. Many of these had been washed out and had rolled down the hill, where a bushel of them might be collected in a few hours. The outcrop does not extend over a large area, only about two hundred yards on one side of the bank.

On January 22d I started eastward toward the Mormon settlement, passing the watershed at a height of 8,025 feet. After fifteen miles of travel we arrived at the Mormon colony called Pacheco, and situated on the Piedras Verdes River. It consists of small wooden houses lying peacefully on the slope, surrounded by pine forests, at an elevation of seven thousand feet. A saw-mill bore evidence of industry. There were sixteen families living here, and as we arrived some eighty children were just streaming out of school. Near by stood a kindly looking old man, possibly their teacher. The children, who ranged in age from seven to eighteen years, were all studying in one class. They showed remarkably varied physiognomies, yet all looked healthy and sturdy, and were demure and well-behaved.

We made camp one and a half miles from the village, and in the evening we were visited by my friend from the sierra and another Mormon. Both expressed their readiness to serve us in every way they could; we bought some potatoes and half a hog.

As is the custom with the Mormons, they have several colonies outlying from a central one. Among these is Cave Valley, about five miles east to north from Pacheco, immediately upon the river already mentioned. On the following day I went there with the scientific corps to examine the cave dwellings of which the Mormons had been speaking. The settlement (having an elevation 6,850 feet) consisted of eight houses. Knocking on the door of one of these I walked in, introduced myself, and stated the purpose of my visit. "How do you do?" said my host; "my name is Nelson"—as if he had been accustomed to receive strangers every day.

Mr. Nelson was quite a charming old man, more than seventy years old, but hardy. In spite of the cold, he walked out in his shirt sleeves in the full moonlight to select a camping place for me. The animals, he suggested, might be left in the field for the night; he would see about them in the morning, and he did not think there would be any difficulty about keeping them there. We got a fine camp on top of a hill with a view of the valley in which the caves are.

Mr. Nelson told us of two interesting caves on this side of the river; also, that there were numerous "inscriptions" (petroglyphs), that the country was full of mounds, and that skeletons and mummies had been found but had been buried again. From his statement it was evident that we had a rich field before us, and the results of the following day more than came up to our expectations.

The old man, acting as our guide, showed us on the way to the valley a primitive kind of corn-mill driven by water power, and with some pride he pointed out to us an "infant industry," the product of which so far was a dozen wooden chairs with seats of interwoven strips of green hide, instead of cane.

A number of caves were found to contain houses. One of them especially made a great impression on us on account of an extraordinary cupola-shaped structure, which from a considerable distance sprang into view from the mouth of the cave. Most of the caves were found on the western side of the river; but there were also some on the eastern bank, among them a number of burial caves. In one of the latter a well-preserved mummy was shown to us. It had already been taken up two or three times to be looked at; but our guide intimated that the influential Mormons in Utah did not want to have the skeletons and caves disturbed. I therefore left it for the present, but thought that in time we might get this, with whatever others might be found there.

I was introduced to a Mormon in the neighbourhood, who invited me to excavate a large mound close to his house. He would even help to dig, he said, and I was free to take whatever I might find inside of it. He was sure that there would be no difficulty about the mummies I might want to remove from the burial caves.



Chapter IV

A Splendid Field Prepared for Us by the Ancient Agriculturists of Cave Valley—House Groups in Caves Along a Pretty Stream—Well-preserved Mummies Found in Caves—More Trincheras—Our Excavations in Caves and Mounds Confirm to the Mormons their Sacred Stories—We Move to the Plains of San Diego—Visit to Casas Grandes and the Watch-tower—Successful Excavations of the Mounds near San Diego.

Finding the locality so inviting for research, I decided to remain here, returning to Pacheco only to despatch the rest of my party to make excavations at the ranch of San Diego, thirty miles to the east, down on the plains of Chihuahua. The ranch was temporarily leased by an American, Mr. Galvin, who received my expedition hospitably, and invited the members to remain as long as they pleased and to make excavations wherever they wanted.

Cave Valley is the widening of a long, low-walled canon through which the Piedras Verdes River flows. As its name implies, it contains many caves in the felsitic conglomerate overlying the region. It is from one-quarter to half a mile wide, and has a fine, rich, loamy soil. The stream is ten to twenty feet wide and from one to three feet deep. Fine forests of pine, oak, cedar, and maple surround it, and make it an ideal dwelling-place for a peaceful, primitive people.

The little knoll on which we were encamped rises on the north side of a brook which empties itself in the river. It was in equally close proximity to the dwellings of the living and the dwellings of the dead.

Up the main stream, on the western wall of the canon, and about a mile from our camp, is a large cave containing the curious cupola-shaped structure already mentioned. The cave is easy of approach up a sloping bank from its south side, and arriving at it we found it quite commodious and snug. It is about eighty feet wide at its mouth, and about a hundred feet deep. In the central part it is almost eighteen feet high, but the roof gradually slopes down in the rear to half that height.

A little village, or cluster of houses, lies at its back and sides. The interior of most of the rooms must have been quite dark, though the light reaches the outside of all the houses. The walls are still standing about six feet high. The compartments, though small, are seldom kennel-like. Some of the houses have shallow cellars. The roof of the cave was thickly smoked over its entire surface. From traces of walls still remaining on it, we may infer that a second story had been built toward the centre of the cave, though this could only have been five feet high. These traces of walls on the roof further prove the important fact that this second story had been built in terrace-fashion, receding about four feet back from the front of the ground story.

The cave had evidently been occupied for a very long time, the houses showing many alterations and additions, and on the walls I counted as many as twelve coatings of plaster and whitewash. The conventional design of the ear of corn is well preserved in every doorway. Rude scrawlings of soot and water cover nearly all the front walls, mixed here and there with a few traces of red ochre. There are meander designs, lightning, and drawings of cows and horses; but the latter were doubtless put on after the walls were demolished, and their general appearance denotes recentness.

Several of the cyclopean riffles lead from the cave cliff to the stream.

The houses here, as well as in all other caves we examined, were built entirely of a powdery substance, the decomposed material of the cave itself. Great quantities of it were found on the floors of caves which had not been occupied by man. It is not of a sandy nature, and its colour is light brown, sometimes almost grey, or even white. The ancient builders simply had to mix it with water and mould it into bricks, which, though fairly uniform in thickness, were very irregular in size. There were no marks of implements on the walls; all the work seems to have been done by hand and smoothed over with some wetted fabric. In one cave of this valley the walls show finger-marks on the plaster. Occasionally we found a small boulder of hard stone embedded in the wall.

The most unique feature of this cave, however, is the cupola-shaped structure which stands in an open space in front of the house group, near the mouth of the cave, but still under its roof. Its height, measured inside, is twelve feet, and its widest inside diameter is eleven feet. Its walls average eight inches in thickness. It has one aperture three feet wide at the top, another one of the same dimension near the base, and there are several others nearly opposite each other. In the two upper ones are seen distinct impressions of timber in the plaster.

The building was made by twisting long grass into a compact cable and laying it up, one round upon another. As the coil proceeded, thick coats of plaster were laid on inside and outside. This plaster, which is the same material as that of which the houses are constructed, got thoroughly mixed with the straw during the process of building, and the entire structure was finished without any opening except the one at the top. The other apertures were undoubtedly cut out afterward. There is no trace of withes or other binding material to hold the straw cables in place. They are kept in position only by the plaster, which here, as in the houses, is almost as hard as the conglomerate of the surrounding rocks.

My Mexicans from Sonora called it olla, a jar, and insisted that it was a vessel used for keeping water; but this is entirely improbable, for several reasons, mainly because the river is in close proximity and easy of access. It was without the slightest doubt a granary. Similar structures, used for that purpose to the present day, may be seen in the States of Vera Cruz and Tlaxcala. In a cave only a short distance away, the rear portion of which also contained a group of houses, we found between the mouth of the cave and the house walls the remains of five of these peculiar buildings which I call granaries. They, too, were made of straw and plaster, similar to the one described, but the walls here were only two inches thick. The remains showed that they had not been set up in any special arrangement, nor were all five alike. Two of them were deeply sunken into the floor of the cave, and inside of them we found, between the rubbish and debris that filled them, several grains of corn and some beans.

The other caves which we examined in this valley were of the same general character as these two, although we found no granaries in them. On this page is shown the ground plan of a cave on the east side of the river, and attention is drawn to the singular concrete seats or blocks against the wall in the house on the west side of the cave. A floor of concrete had been made in this cave extending inward and fairly level.

Evidence of two-storeyed groups of houses was clearly noticeable in many caves; but our investigations were somewhat impeded by the destruction wrought by some Mormon relic-hunter, who had carried off almost everything removable. He had even taken away many of the door lintels and hand-grips, in fact, most of the woodwork, from the houses.

In the rear of some of the caves it was so dark that we had to light a candle to find our way, crawling from house to house. In one instance we found a stone stairway of three steps.

In spite of the tremendous dust which is raised by digging into the ground, and which makes the work very arduous, we searched diligently and succeeded in bringing to light a number of objects which fairly welt illustrate the culture of the ancient people. Among them were needles and awls of bone; a complete fire drill with a stick showing drilling, basketry work covered with pinon pith mats and girdles, threads of fibre or hair, and sandals plaited of yucca leaves. Wads of cotton and pieces of pottery were found in many places; and an interesting find was a "boomerang" similar to that used to this day by the Moqui Indians for killing rabbits. The handle is plainly seen, but the top is broken. The implement, which is made of very hard, reddish wood, has but a slight curve. We discovered many smooth pieces of iron ore that had probably been used for ceremonial purposes, and a bow that had been hidden away on a ledge.

That the ancient cave-dwellers were agriculturists is evident from the numerous corncobs, as well as grains of corn and beans, that we came upon. Datems, a green, sweet fruit still eaten by the Mexicans, were identified everywhere in the cave-dwellings.

Having effectually started the work of investigation here, I went to look after the second section of my expedition, which had been sent to San Diego. I covered the thirty-five miles with four pack mules in one day. There is a charming view from the brow of the sierra over the plains of San Diego, which are fully ten miles wide; but after descending to them I found a hard, cold wind blowing. The weather here is not at all as pleasant as in the sheltered Cave Valley up in the mountains.

I went to Casas Grandes, a village of 1,200 souls, six miles north of San Diego, and succeeded in getting a draft cashed. On learning that Mr. Moses Thatcher, a prominent Mormon apostle from Utah, was on a tour of inspection of the colonies, I proceeded to Colonia Juarez, a prosperous Mormon settlement on the Piedras Verdes River, ten miles from Casas Grandes and six miles from San Diego. It was only four years old, but had already a number of well laid-out broad streets, set on both sides with cottonwood trees, and all the houses were surrounded by gardens. I explained to Mr. Thatcher that I desired to make excavations in Cave Valley, and he courteously acceded to my wishes, adding that I might take away anything of interest to science.

To reduce expenses, I paid off many of my Mexican men, who then returned to their homes in Sonora, going over the sierra by the trail we had made in coming east. A few months later several of them returned, bringing others with them, and asked to work again in the camp, which remained in San Diego for about nine months longer—long enough for us to see quite a little trade in oranges, sugar, tobacco, etc., developing between Sonora and Chihuahua by way of the road cut out by us, and called, after me, el camino del doctor.

Excavations in Cave Valley were continued, and the burial caves gave even better results than the cave-dwellings. They were located in the eastern side of the canon, which is rarely touched by the sun's rays. With one exception the ceilings and sides of these caves were much blackened by smoke. There was not the slightest trace of house walls, and no other sign that the place had ever been inhabited; therefore, a fire here could have had no other purpose than a religious one, just as the Tarahumares to this day make a fire in the cave in which they bury their dead. Indeed, at first sight there was nothing in the cave to indicate that they had ever been utilised by man; but below the dust we came upon a hard, concrete floor, and after digging through this to a depth of three feet, we fortunately struck a skull, and then came upon the body of a man. After this we disinterred that of a mother holding a child in her arms, and two other bodies, all lying on their left sides, their knees half drawn up, and their faces turned toward the setting sun. All were in a marvellous state of preservation, owing to the presence of saltpetre in the dust. This imparted to the dead a mummy-like appearance, but there was nothing to suggest that embalming or other artificial means of preservation of the bodies had been used. The entire system was simply desiccated intact, merely shrunken, with the skin on most of the bodies almost unbroken. The features, and even the expression of the countenance, were in many cases quite distinct. Some had retained their eyebrows and part of their hair, and even their intestines had not all disappeared.

The hair of these people was very slightly wavy, and softer than that of the modern Indian; in fact, almost silky. The statures were quite low, and in general appearance these ancients bear a curious resemblance to the Moqui Indians, who have a tradition that their ancestors came from the south, and who, to this day, speak of their "southern brethren"; but it would be very rash to conclude from this that the cave-dwellers of northwestern Chihuahua are identical with the Moqui ancestors. I afterwards brought to light several other bodies which had been interred under similar conditions. The bottom of the burial caves seems to have always been overlaid with a roughly level, concrete floor. There was no trace here of cysts, or other formal sepulture.

None of the remains wore ornaments of metal, but various shell ornaments, anklets and bracelets of beautifully plaited straw, which, however, crumbled into dust when touched. Their clothing consisted of three layers of wrappings around the loins. Next to the body was placed a coarse cotton cloth; then a piece of matting, and over that another cotton cloth. Between the legs was a large wad of cotton mixed with the feathers of the turkey, the large woodpecker, and the bluejay. In a few instances, the cotton cloth was dyed red or indigo. Near the head of each body stood a small earthenware jar of simple design; in some cases we also found drinking gourds placed at the head, though in one instance the latter had been put on the breast of the dead. Buried with the person we found a bundle of "devil's claws" (Martynia). These are used by the Mexicans of to-day for mending pottery. They drill holes through the fragments to be joined and pass into them one of these claws, just as we would a rivet. The claw is elastic and strong, and answers the purpose very well. My Mexicans understood at once to what use they had been put.

As already alluded to, trincheras were also found in Cave Valley, where they were quite numerous. There was one or more in every ravine and gully, and what was a new feature, some were built across shallow drainages on the very summit of a hill. This summit was a bald conglomerate, about 150 feet above the valley. In one place we observed eight trincheras within 150 feet of each other, all built of large stones in the cyclopean style of masonry. The blocks were lava and hard felsite, measuring one and a half to three feet. As a rule, these trincheras had a lateral extent of thirty feet, and in the central part they were fifteen feet high. After all the great labour expended in their construction, the builders of these terraces had secured in each only a space thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide; in other words, these eight terraces yielded together barely 3,000 square feet, which means space enough for planting five or six hundred hills of corn. People who do not know the Indians would consider this too small a result to favour the theory that these terraces were erected for agricultural purposes. But the Indian's farming is, in proportion to his wants, conducted on a small scale, and he never thinks of raising more corn than he actually needs; in fact, many tribes, as for instance the Tarahumares, seldom raise enough to last the family all the year through.

Further groups of cave-dwellings were found some ten miles higher up the river, in what is called the "Strawberry Valley," probably through the prevalence of the strawberry tree, of which several beautiful specimens were seen. The largest cave there contained fourteen houses. Unlike the dwellings in the Cave Valley, here a gallery ran in front of the houses. The woodwork here was fresher than that of the Cave Valley houses, and as the walls had only three coats of plaster and whitewash, and the corners did not show much wear, these dwellings were undoubtedly of more recent origin. But the general character of the structures was similar to those we first investigated. No implements were found in these caves. In the same locality were quite a number of smaller caves containing houses in demolition. In one of them the walls were composed of stones and mud, and here we also saw the first circular-shaped house in a cave.

By digging below the concrete floor of one of the rooms, we came upon the skeletons of five adults. This was a singular fact, showing that these ancient cave-dwellers observed the custom of burying their dead under the floors of their houses when conditions permitted it. Cave-dwellings comprising twenty rooms were also seen by the Mormons at the head of Bavispe River.

My relations with the Mormons continued to be friendly, and in my dealings with them I found them honest and business-like. While thriftily providing for the material requirements of this life, they leave all their enjoyment of existence for the future state. Their life is hard, but they live up to their convictions, though these, in some points, date from a by-gone stage in the development of the human race.

They were much interested in our work, never doubting but that it could only be to their advantage to have light thrown upon the mysteries buried in their caves, as, in their opinion, our researches would only confirm the statements made in the "Book of Mormon," which mentions the prehistoric races of America. They told me that the book speaks of the arrival of three races in America. The first landing was made at Guaymas in Sonora, the people being fugitives from the divine wrath that destroyed the Tower of Babel. They were killed. The second race landed in New England, coming from Jerusalem; and the third, also coming from Jerusalem, landed in Chile.

We spent altogether about six weeks in Cave Valley, and the weather, as far as our experience went, was pleasant enough, although in February, for several days, a strong, cold wind was blowing, so as to interfere with our work in the mounds at daytime and with our sleep at night. In addition to the discomforting feeling that at any moment my tent might be blown down, I was worried by the possibility of its falling on the results of our excavations, the pottery and skeletons, which, for safety's sake, I kept in my tent. The situation was not improved by some indiscreet burro (donkey), who would stray into the camp and get himself entangled in the tent ropes.

On January 30th nearly seven inches of snow fell. One day a flock of twenty-five turkeys was observed near our camp; but our efforts to get within shooting distance proved futile, as these cunning birds, who apparently move about so unconcernedly, always disappeared as if they had vanished into the ground, whenever one of us, no matter how cautiously, tried to approach them.

News of Apaches was again afloat, and one day a Mexican officer called at the camp obviously in pursuit of Apaches from whom he had recently taken twelve horses: but unfortunately the men had escaped. The presidente of Casas Grandes had been advised of the killing of two Americans near San Bernardino by some Apaches, and had also ordered some men to look for the miscreants in the sierra.

Having thoroughly investigated the caves, we turned our attention to the mounds, which are very numerous in this part of the country. They are always covered with grass, and sometimes even trees grow on them. When excavated they disclosed the remains of houses of a type similar to that of the cave-dwellings. Some of the mounds were high enough to justify the supposition that the houses had two stories, each six or seven feet high, and containing a number of rooms. From the locality in which the mounds were found it becomes at once evident that the houses which once stood there were not destroyed by inundations and covered by diluvial deposits. The mounds are composed of gravelly cement and fine debris of house walls, and the rooms left are completely filled with this material. It is easy to imagine how the mounds were formed by the gradual demolition of the ceilings, plastering, and roofs, forming a heap which to-day appears as shapely as if it had been made by man for some definite purpose.

The houses were communal dwellings, each consisting of one room, which generally was not quite ten feet square. The walls, eight to nine inches thick, built of a mixture of clay and earth, were fairly well preserved in places. In one house, which had unusually solid compartments, the walls were twenty, and in some places even thirty-three, inches thick. Here nothing could be found, either in the rooms or by excavating below the floor. The same conventional doorways were met with in all the mound houses, but there was hardly any trace Of woodwork.

Excavations in one of the mounds near our camp disclosed very interesting composite structures. One part of the walls consisted of large posts set in the ground and plastered over, forming a stuccoed palisade. At right angles with this was a wall of cobble-stones, and among the buried debris were fragments of adobe bricks. In one room of this group, at a depth of less than five feet, we struck a floor of trodden concrete. Breaking through we found a huddle of six or seven skeletons, which, however, were not entire.

Rarely if ever was any object found in these rooms, except, perhaps, some stray axe, or some metates and grinding stones, and in one case a square stone paint pot. But by digging below the concrete floors we came upon skeletons which seemed to have been laid down without regard to any rule, and with them were invariably buried some household utensils, such as earthenware jars and bowls, beautifully decorated; axes and mauls, fairly carved and polished. One very rare object was secured: a doubled-grooved axe. The skeletons were badly preserved, but we were able to gather several skulls and some of the larger bones.

The floor material was so hard that only by means of heavy iron bars could we break through it. As it was impracticable for us to make complete excavations, the number of rooms each mound contained cannot be stated. There were in the immediate neighbourhood of Cave Valley at least ten or twelve separate groups, each of which had from four to eight rooms on the ground floor. The entire district is richly studded with mounds. On an excursion three or four miles down Piedras Verdes River I saw several groups of mounds, some of which, no doubt, contained many objects of antiquity. On top of one low hill was a large group, and half a mile north of this another, 160 paces long and containing two oblong mounds. Some of the mounds were ten or twelve feet high.

A very trustworthy Mormon informed me that there were no ruins, in caves or otherwise, along the river between this settlement and Colonia Juarez; nor were there any, he said, for a hundred miles south of Pacheco, though mounds could be seen in several places. Therefore when I at last departed from Cave Valley, I took his advice and did not follow the course of the Piedras Verdes River down to San Diego, but led the pack train the safer, though longer, way over the regular road. The country along the river was afterward explored by members of my expedition. They came upon several small caves high up on the side of the canon, some of which had once been inhabited, to judge from the many potsherds and the smoky roofs; but no cave-houses were found until higher up the river, where some were seen in the sandstone cliffs.

I broke camp in Cave Valley on March 11th, and arrived on the same day at Old Juarez, a few miles from my camp at San Diego. Now the weather was warm; the grass was sprouting, and I noticed a flock of wild geese going northward.

The plains of San Diego used to swarm with antelopes, and even at the time of my visit herds of them could be seen now and then. One old hunter near Casas Grandes resorted to an ingenious device for decoying them. He disguised himself as an antelope, by means of a cloak of cotton cloth (manta) painted to resemble the colouring of the animal. This covered his body, arms, and legs. On his head he placed the antlers of a stag, and by creeping on all fours he could approach the antelopes quite closely and thus successfully shoot them. The Apaches, according to the Mexicans, were experts at hunting antelopes in this manner.

We excavated a mound near Old Juarez and found in it a small basin of black ware. There were twelve or fifteen other mounds, all containing house groups. The largest among them was 100 feet long, fifty feet wide, and ten feet high; others, while covering about the same space, were only three or four to six feet high. They were surrounded, in an irregular way, by numerous stone heaps, some quite small, others large and rectangular, inclosing a space thirty by ten feet.

From an archaeological point of view, the district we now found ourselves in is exceedingly rich, and I determined to explore it as thoroughly as circumstances permitted. One can easily count, in the vicinity of San Diego, over fifty mounds, and there are also rock carvings and paintings in various places. Some twenty miles further south there are communal cave-dwellings, resembling those in Cave Valley, which were examined by members of the expedition at the San Miguel River, about eight miles above the point at which the river enters the plains. Inside of one large cave numerous houses were found. They had all been destroyed, yet it was plainly evident that some of them had originally been three stories high.

But the centre of interest is Casas Grandes, the famous ruin situated about a mile south of the town which took its name, and we soon went over to investigate it.

The venerable pile of fairly well preserved ruins has already been described by John Russell Bartlett, in 1854, and more recently by A. F. Bandelier; a detailed description is therefore here superfluous. Suffice it to say that the Casas Grandes, or Great Houses, are a mass of ruined houses, huddled together on the western bank of the river. Most of the buildings have fallen in and form six or eight large mounds, the highest of which is about twenty feet above the ground. Low mesquite bushes have taken root along the mounds and between the ruins. The remaining walls are sufficiently well preserved to give us an idea of the mode of building employed by the ancients. At the outskirts of the ruined village the houses are lower and have only one story, while in its central part they must have been at one time at least four stories high. They were not palaces, but simply dwellings, and the whole village, which probably once housed 3,000 or 4,000 people, resembles, in its general characteristics, the pueblos in the Southwest, and, for that matter, the houses we excavated from the mounds. The only features that distinguish these from either of the other structures are the immense thickness of the walls, which reaches as much as five feet, and the great height of the buildings. The material, too, is different, consisting of enormous bricks made of mud mixed with coarse gravel, and formed in baskets or boxes.

A striking fact is that the houses apparently are not arranged in accordance with any laid-out plan or regularity. Nevertheless they looked extremely picturesque, viewed from the east as the sun was setting. I camped for a few days on top of the highest mound, between the ruined walls.

No circular building, nor any trace of a place of worship, could be found. The Mexicans, some of whom have nestled on the eastern part of the ruins, have from time to time come upon beautiful jars and bowls, which they sold to relic hunters or used themselves. Such pottery is far superior in quality and decoration to anything now made in Mexico. The ancient metates of Casas Grandes, which are much appreciated by the present inhabitants of the valley, are decidedly the finest I have ever seen. They are square in shape, resting on four legs, and well finished. There have also been taken out some stone axes and arrowheads, which are much like those found in the Southwest of the United States.

Some years ago a large meteorite was unearthed in a small room on the first floor of one of the highest of the buildings. When discovered it was found carefully put away and covered with cotton wrappings. No doubt it once had served some religious purpose. On account of its glittering appearance, the Mexicans thought it was silver, and everybody wanted to get a piece of it. But it was taken to Chihuahua, and the gentleman who sent it to Germany told me that it weighed 2,000 pounds.

There are still traces of well-constructed irrigation ditches to be seen approaching the ruins from the northwest. There are also several artificial accumulations of stones three to fifteen feet high and of various shapes. One of them has the form of a Latin cross measuring nineteen feet along its greatest extent. Others are rectangular, and still others circular. About three miles off, toward the west, are found pictures pecked on large stones, one representing a bird, another one the sun.

An interesting relic of the population that once prospered in Casas Grandes Valley is a watch tower, plainly visible on a mountain to the southwest, and about five miles, in a straight line, from the ruins. Well-defined tracks lead up to it from all directions, especially from the east and west. On the western side three such trails were noticed, and several join at the lower part of the ridge, which runs southward and culminates in the promontory on which the watch tower stands 1,500 feet above the plains.

The western side of the ridge is in some places quite precipitous, but there is a fairly good track running along its entire extent to the top. Sometimes the road is protected with stones, and in other places even with walls, on the outer side. Although the ascent is, at times, steep, the top can be reached on horseback.

The path strikes a natural terrace, and on this is seen a ruined house group built of undressed stones on the bare rock. Some of the walls are twenty-four inches thick. And a little to the south of it is a large mound, from which a Mormon has excavated two rooms. A very well-built stone wall runs for more than 100 paces from north to south on the western, or most easily accessible, side of the pueblo.

After leaving this ancient little village, we made a pleasant ascent to the top, where a strikingly beautiful panorama opened up before us on all sides. The summit commands a view of the fertile valleys for miles around in every direction. To the west is the valley of the Piedras Verdes River, and to the east the valley of Casas Grandes; and in the plains to the south the snakelike windings of the San Miguel River glitter in the sun. Toward the north the view is immense, and fine mountains form a fitting frame for the landscape all around the horizon.

What a pre-eminently fine position for a look-out! As I contemplated the vast stretches of land commanded from this point, I pondered for how many centuries sentinels from this spot may have scanned the horizon with their eagle eyes to warn their people of any enemy approaching to disturb their peaceful occupations.

The fort is circular and about forty feet in diameter. The surrounding wall is on one side about eleven feet high and very broad, while in other places it is much lower and narrower. There are four clearly outlined chambers in the centre; but by excavations nothing could be found in them, except that the flooring was one inch thick.

It was quite warm here. Some birds were about, and there were a few flowers out. Wild white currant bushes were growing inside of the fortress, breathing delicious fragrance. But aside from the top, the mountain was all but barren of vegetation.

A few days afterward I went on an excursion up the Casas Grandes Valley, as far as the Mormon colony Dublan. This valley, which is about fifteen miles long and equally as broad, is very fertile where properly irrigated, and maize and wheat fields delight the eye. Naturally, the country is well populated, and the mounds which are met with everywhere prove that this was already the case in ancient times. In fact, mounds, in groups or isolated, are numerous as far north as Ascension.

How richly the apparently poor soil repays the labour which man expends on it may be seen in the flourishing colony the Mormons have here. Wherever they go, the Mormons transform waste land into scenes of prosperity, so much so that the Mexicans attribute the success of these indefatigable developers to a gold mine, which they are supposed to work secretly at night.

As I found it imperative to return to the United States in the interest of the expedition, I considered it expedient to reduce my scientific corps to three. My camp at San Diego I left in charge of Mr. H. White, who later on was relieved by Mr. C. V. Hartman. During my absence they conducted excavations of the mounds along the southern bank of the Piedras Verdes River, near its junction with San Miguel River, and in convenient neighbourhood to the camp. Neither the mounds themselves nor the houses inside of them differ much from those already described on the upper part of the river, except that some of the mounds here were somewhat larger. Judging from the beams left, they probably contained a few three-story houses. However, in either locality most of the mound houses were only one story high, and where second or third stories were indicated, they were never found intact. In neither place were circular houses observed. The mounds here were located on a rich, alluvial clay soil.

Here, as on the upper part of the river, the treasures we secured were taken from underneath the floors of the houses, where they had been buried with the dead. Here, as there, they consisted of beautifully decorated earthenware jars and bowls, some of them in bizarre representations of animal and human forms, besides stone implements, shell beads, pieces of pyrites and turquoise, all being generally unearthed intact.

The things were found alongside of skeletons, which were huddled together in groups of from two to five in one of the corners. The jars, bowls, etc., had generally been deposited close to the body, as a rule near the head. The skulls of the skeletons were mostly crushed, and crumbled to dust when exposed to the air. There was no trace of charring on the bones, although in some cases charcoal was found close to the skeletons.

To excavate such mounds is slow and tedious work, requiring much patience. Sometimes nothing was found for weeks. Small mounds gave results as good as, if not better than, some large ones. In shape they are more or less conical, flattened at the top; some are oblong, a few even rectangular. The highest among them rose to twenty or twenty-five feet, but the majority varied from five to twelve feet. The house walls inside of them were from eight to sixteen inches thick.

The pottery which was excavated here may be judged by the accompanying plates. It is superior in quality, as well as in decoration, to that produced by the Pueblos of the Southwest of the United States. The clay is fine in texture and has often a slight surface gloss, the result of mechanical polishing. Though the designs in general remind one of those of the Southwestern Pueblos, as, for instance, the cloud terraces, scrolls, etc., still most of the decorations in question show more delicacy, taste, and feeling, and are richer in colouring.

This kind of pottery is known only from excavations in the valleys of San Diego and of Piedras Verdes River, as Well as from Casas Grandes Valley. It forms a transition from the culture of the Pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico to that of the Valley of Mexico, a thousand miles farther south. In a general way the several hundred specimens of the collection can be divided into four groups:

(1) The clay is quite fine, of white colour, with a slightly grayish-yellow tinge. The decorations are black and red, or black only. This is the predominant type, and may be seen in Plates I. and II.; also Plate III., a.

(2) Of a very similar character, but somewhat coarser in texture, and heavier. See Plate III., b to g, and Plate IV., f Both these groups include variations in the decorative designs, as may be seen in the rest of Plate IV.

(3) Brown pottery with black decorations. See Plate V., a, b, c, and e.

(4) Black ware.

Here follows a condensed description of the more important specimens shown in the plates:

PLATE I

Heights: a, 18.5 cm; b, 15.2 cm; c, 16.2 cm; d, 18.8 cm; e, 11.3 cm; f, 8.5 cm.

a, particularly graceful in outline and decoration, is a representative type that is often found.

c, from Colonia Dublan, is made in the shape of a horned toad, the lizard so familiar to anyone who has visited the Southwest of the United States. The head with its spikes, and the tail as well, are well rendered; the thorny prominences of the body are represented by the indentations around the edge.

d, the principal decoration here is the plumed serpent with a bird's head.

e, a vase in the shape of a duck.

f, a bowl decorated only around the edge and in the interior.

PLATE II

Height, 16.5 cm.

Here is shown what, in regard both to manufacture and to decoration, is the best specimen in the collection. Its principal ornaments are the plumed serpent and two birds, all clearly seen in the extension of the design above and below the vase. The lower section is a continuation of the upper one.

The birds are represented as in flight. Mr. M. H. Saville is probably right in considering them as quetzals, though the habitat of this famous trogon is Central America and the southernmost part of Mexico. The bird and the serpent form the decoration of other jars of this collection and would indicate that the makers of this pottery were affiliated with the Aztecs in their adoration of the great deity Quetzalcoatl.

PLATE III

Heights: a, 18.5 cm; b, 18 cm; c, 17 cm; d, 11 cm; e, 14.5 cm; f 15.3 cm; g, 24.2 cm.

c, a jar in the shape of a conventionalised owl.

d, a jar in the shape of a fish.

f is a much conventionalised representation of four horned toads. Around its upper part it has two serpents, apparently coral snakes, attached in high relief.

PLATE IV

Heights: a, 14 cm; b, 16.8 cm; c, 18.6 cm; d, 12.2 cm; e, 22 cm; f, 18.5 cm.

a, a very realistic representation of the rain-grub.

c has a black slip.

d is very strong and highly polished, and differs also in colouring from the rest.

PLATE V

Heights: a, 3.7 cm; b, 9.8 cm; c, 25.6 cm; d, 17 cm; e, 20.7 cm; f, 19.3 cm; g, 19.3 cm.

This brown ware is very handsome, and its ornamentation is strikingly artistic in its simplicity. See, for instance, Plate V., e. D, f, and g represent pottery from Casas Grandes, distinguished by a certain solidity and a higher polish.



Chapter V

Second Expedition—Return to the Sierra—Parrots in the Snow—Cave-dwellings at Garabato, the most Beautiful in Northern Mexico—A Superb View of the Sierra Madre—The Devil's Spine Ridge—Guaynopa, the Famous Old Silver Mine—Aros River—On Old Trails—Adventures of "El Chino"—Cure for Poison Ivy.

When in the middle of January, 1892, I resumed my explorations, my party was only about one-third as large as it had been the year before. In pursuance of my plan, I again entered the Sierra Madre, returning to it, as far as Pacheco, by the road on which we had come down to San Diego. We travelled over freshly-fallen snow a few inches deep, and encountered a party of eight revolutionists from Ascension, among whom I perceived the hardest looking faces I had ever laid eyes on. All questions regarding their affairs they answered evasively, and I could not help feeling some anxiety for three of the men, who with a Mexican guide, had for some weeks been exploring the country around Chuhuichupa, a discarded cattle range some forty miles south of Pacheco. Next day I sent a man ahead to warn them against the political fugitives. The Mormons told me that for more than a fortnight they had been keeping track of these suspicious-looking characters who had been camping in the neighbourhood.

There were repeated falls of snow, and the sierra assumed a thoroughly northern aspect. Only the multitude of green parrots with pretty red and yellow heads, chattering in the tree-tops and feasting on pine cones, reminded us that we were in southern latitudes. As all tracks had been obliterated by the snow, I secured a Mormon to guide us southward.

About ten miles south of Pacheco we passed Mound Valley, or "Los Montezumas," so named after the extraordinary number of montezumas, or mounds, found in the locality, probably not far from a thousand. Looking at them from a distance, there seemed to be some plan in their arrangement, inasmuch as they formed rows running from north to south. They are small, and nearly all of them are on the south side of a sloping plain which spread itself over about 500 acres in the midst of densely pine-covered highlands.

On making camp a few miles south of this plateau we found that one of the mules had strayed off. My dismay over the loss of the animal was not alleviated by the news that the mule was the one that carried my blankets and tent, and that I had a good prospect of passing at least one uncomfortable night on the snow. The American who had been intrusted with keeping count of the animals on the road immediately went back to look for the lost one; but not until next day did a Mexican, who had been sent along with him, bring back the pack, which the mule had managed to get rid of. The animal itself and its aparejo were never recovered by us.

On my arrival at Chuhuichupa I found everything satisfactory. There are extensive grass-lands here, and a few years after our visit the Mormons established a colony. The name Chuhuichupa is interesting, as it is the first one we came upon that was of undoubted Tarahumare origin "chuhui." being the Spanish corruption of "Chu-i," which means "dead." The name signifies "the place of the dead," possibly alluding to burial caves.

Here Mr. Taylor had discovered very interesting cave-dwellings, fifteen miles southeast to east in a straight lilac from the camp, but fully twenty-five miles by the track he had followed. The Mexicans called the cave Garabato, a Spanish word, which in Mexico is used in the sense of "decorative designs," and refers here to ancient paintings or scrawlings on the house walls. The cave is situated in a gorge on the northern slope of the Arroyo Garabato, which drains into the Rio Chico. It is in conglomerate formation, faces east, and lies about 215 feet above the bottom of the gorge. The ascent is steep and somewhat difficult. At a little distance the high, regular walls of the houses, with their many door and window openings, presented a most striking contrast to their surroundings of snow-covered jagged cliffs, in the lonely wilderness of pine woods. Some of the walls had succumbed to the weight of ages, but, on the whole, the ruins are in a good state of preservation, and although I found cave-dwellings as far south as Zapuri, Chihuahua, none of them were nearly as well preserved nor on such an extensive scale. Time would not allow me to visit the cave myself, and the following description is based on notes taken by Mr. Taylor on the spot, as well as on his photographs and his verbal explanations.

The space covered by the houses and fallen walls was 125 feet from side to side, and at the central part the dwellings were thirty-five feet deep. The roof of the cave, or rather, the overhanging cliff, was at the highest point eighty feet above the floor. The houses were arranged in an arc of a circle so large as hardly to deviate from a straight line. The front row seems to have been of but one story, while the adjoining row back of it had two stories. The roof of the houses at no place reached the roof of the cave. Each room was about twelve feet square, and the walls, which showed no evidence of blocks or bricks, varied in thickness from fifteen inches at the base to seven inches at the top of the highest. At some places large stones were built into the walls; in another wall wooden posts and horizontal sticks or laths were found. The surface of the walls, which were protected against the weather, was smooth and even, and the interior walls showed seven or eight coatings of plaster. The floors, where they could be examined, were smoothly cemented and so hard as to effectively resist the spade. The pine poles which formed the roof were smooth, but not squared; they were three to four inches in diameter; and some of them were twenty-four feet long. According to all appearances, they had been hewn with a blunt instrument, as they were more hacked than cut. Many of them were nicely rounded off at the ends, and several inches from the ends a groove was cut all around the pole.

In the centre of the back rooms of the ground floor there was usually a pine pole, about ten inches in diameter, set up like a rude pillar. Resting on this and the side walls of the rooms in a slight curve was a similar pole, also rounded, and running parallel to the front of the houses; and crossing it from the front to the rear walls were laid similar poles or rafters about four inches in diameter. The ends of these were set directly into the walls, and covering them was a roofing of mud, some three inches thick, hard, and on the upper surface smooth. The second story, where it had not caved in, was covered in the same manner. None of the lower story rooms had an outlet to the apartments above, and the evidence tended to prove that the second story houses were reached from the bottom of the cave over the roofs of the front row of houses by means of ladders.

Most of the rooms were well supplied with apertures of the usual conventional form; sometimes there were as many as three in one room, each one large enough to serve as a door. But there were also several small circular openings, which to civilised man might appear to have served as exits for the smoke; but to the Indian the house, as everything else, is alive, and must have openings through which it can draw breath, as otherwise it would be choked. These holes were three or four inches in diameter, and many of them were blocked up and plastered over. A large number of what seemed to have been doorways were also found to be blocked up, no doubt from some ulterior religious reason.

A peculiar feature of the architecture was a hall not less than forty feet long, and from floor to rafters seven feet high. Six beams were used in the roof, laid between the north and south walls. There were rafters of two different lengths, being set in an angle of about ten degrees to each other. The west wall contained twelve pockets, doubtless the cavities in which the rafters had rested. They were, on an average, three inches in diameter, and ran in some six inches, slanting downward in the interior. The east wall was found to contain upright poles and horizontal slats, forming a framework for the building material. The interior was bare, with the exception of a ledge running along the southern side and made from the same material as the house walls. It was squared up in front and formed a convenient settee.

At the end of this hall, but in the upper story, was found a house that was distinguished from the others by a peculiar decoration in red, while the space around the door was painted in a delicate shade of lavender.

There seems to have been still another hall of nearly the same length as the one described, but which must have been at least one foot and a half higher. It is now almost entirely caved in.

No objects of interest were found that could throw any light on the culture of the builders of these dwellings, except the fragment of a stone axe and a piece of matting.

The day after my arrival at Chuhuichupa I continued my journey, now accompanied by Mr. Taylor and Mr. Meeds. We had as a guide an old Mexican soldier, who had been recommended to us as a man who knew the Sierra Madre better than anyone else. He had, no doubt, lived a wild life; had taken part in many a "scrap" with the Apaches, as his body showed marks of bullets in several places, and he had prospected for gold and silver, traversing a good deal of ground in the mountains at one time or another. But topographical knowledge per se does not necessarily make a good guide. Although "Don Teodoro," by something like instinct, always knew where he was, it did not take us long to discover that he had not judgment enough to guide a pack-train, and his fatuous recklessness caused us a good deal of annoyance, and even loss.

After leaving the grass-lands of Chuhuichupa, we passed through extensive pine regions, full of arroyos and cordons, and it struck me how silent the forest was here. No animal life could be seen or heard. About ten miles south we caught sight of the Sierra de Candelaria, which suddenly loomed up in the southeast, while the Arroyo de Guaynopa yawned on our left. We slowly ascended a beautiful cordon running toward the southwest. The track we followed, our guide assured us, was el camino de los antiguos, but it probably was only an Apache trail. The cordon was rather narrow, and from time to time gave us sweeping views of the stupendous landscape in one direction or another, as the animals slowly made their way up and finally reached the summit. A grandly beautiful sight awaited us; we went a little out of our way to gain a promontory, which, our guide said, was designated "Punto Magnifico." It was at an elevation of 8,200 feet, and gave us certainly the most strikingly magnificent view of the Sierra Madre we yet had enjoyed.

An ocean of mountains spread out before and below us. In the midst of it, right in front of us, were imposing pine-clad mesas and two weathered pinnacles of reddish conglomerate, while further on there followed range after range, peak after peak; the most distant ones, toward the south, seeming at least as far as eighty miles away. The course of the rivers, as they flow deep down between the mountains, was pointed out to us. The principal one is the Arros River, which from the west embraces most of the mesas, and then, turning south, receives its tributaries, the Tutuhuaca and the Mulatos, the latter just behind a pinnacle. West of the Arros River stretches out the immense Mesa de los Apaches, once a stronghold of these marauders, reaching as far as the Rio Bonito. The plateau is also called "The Devil's Spine Mesa," after a high and very narrow ridge, which rises conspicuously from the mesa's western edge and runs in a northerly and southerly direction, like the edge of a gigantic saw. To our amazement, the guide here indicated to us where the camino real from Nacori passes east over a gap in the "Devil's Spine" ridge, and then over several sharp buttes that descend toward the mesa. An odd-looking mesa lay between Rio Bonito and Rio Satachi. Farthest to the west were the big hogbacks near Nacori, standing out ominously, like a perpetuated flash of lightning. The sun was nearing the horizon; the air was translucent, and the entire panorama steeped in a dusky blue.

Immediately below us, to our left, lay Guaynopa. The mountainside looked so steep that it seemed impossible for us to descend from where we were. But we already heard the voices of our muleteers singing out to the animals 1,000 feet below, and that reminded us that we also had better reach camp before darkness should overtake us. We descended 2,500 feet, and, leaving the pines behind, found ourselves in a warmer climate. It never snows here, according to our guide. That the precipitation took the shape of rain we learned when we were impeded by it for two days.

There were yet eighteen miles between us and the deserted mines of Guaynopa. It was a laborious journey over the hills, mostly ascent. Finally we came to a steep slope covered with oaks, along which there was a continuous descent toward Guaynopa. While zigzagging our way down, we caught sight of a large cave with houses and some white cone-shaped structures staring at us across an arroyo midway up the opposite side, which was at least two thousand feet deep. Through my field glasses I could make out very distinctly a group of houses of the usual pattern; and the large, white structures could without difficulty be recognised as granaries, similar to those observed in Cave Valley. It was my intention to go back and examine this cave more closely, as soon as I had found a camping place; but circumstances interfered. Several years later the cave was visited by Mr. G. P. Ramsey, to whom I owe the following brief description.

The cave is situated about twenty-five miles in a straight line south of the Mormon colony of Chuhuichupa. There are indications of a spring in the cave, and there is another one in the arroyo itself. The buildings are in a very bad condition, owing to the action of the elements and animals; but fifty-three rooms could be counted. They were located on a rocky terrace extending from the extreme right to the rear centre of the cave. This extreme right extended slightly beyond the overhanging cliff, and contained groups of two-storied houses. In the central part of the cave were a number of small structures, built of the same material and in a similar manner as those I described as granaries in Cave Valley. They were still in excellent condition, and, as will be seen at a glance, they are almost identical with the granaries used to the present day in some southern States of Mexico.

We continued our descent, and, having dropped altogether some 2,000 feet, at last found ourselves alongside some lonely and unattractive old adobe houses. They were built by the Spaniards and are reputed to have once been the smelter of the now abandoned silver mine of Guaynopa. Only the naked walls remain standing on a decline, which was too steep to give us sufficient camping ground. So we went still a little further, to the top of a hill near by, where we made a tolerably good camp.

This then was the famous locality of Guaynopa, credited with hiding such fabulous wealth. There was still another mine here of the same repute, called Tayopa, and both of them are said to have been worked once by the Jesuits, who before their expulsion from Mexico were in possession of nearly all the mines in the country. According to tradition, the Apaches killed everybody here, and the mines were forgotten until recent times, when ancient church records and other Spanish documents revealed their existence. Several expeditions have been sent out, one, I believe, by the Government for the purpose of locating them; but being situated in the roughest and most inaccessible part of the Sierra Madre, they are still awaiting their rediscovery, unless, contrary to my knowledge, they have been found in recent years. There is no doubt that the country carries very rich silver ore, and we ourselves found specimens of that kind; but the region is so difficult of access that it probably would require too great a capital to work the mines.

There was now a plain track leading along the hillside down toward the Rio Aros, which is scarcely two miles off; but the country was so wild and rugged that the greatest care had to be exercised with the animals to prevent them from coming to grief. The path runs along the upper part of a steep slope, which from a perpendicular weathered cliff drops some 400 feet down into a gorge. As the declivity of the slope is about forty-five degrees, and the track in some places only about a foot wide, there is no saving it if an animal loses its foothold, or if its pack slips. All went well, however, until we reached a point where the track commenced to descend, when our villain of a guide tried to drive some burros back on the track, instead of leading each one carefully. The result was that one of the poor beasts tumbled down, making immense bounds, a hundred feet at a time, and, of course, was killed.

We had no difficulty in fording the Guaynopa Creek near its junction with the Aros River, and selected a camping place on a terrace 200 feet above it. The stream, which is the one that passes the cave-dwellings, carries a good deal of limpid water, and there are abundant signs that at times it runs very high. The elevation of the ford, which is here about the same as that of Aros River, 3,400 feet, was the lowest point we reached in our crossing of the Sierra Madre between Chuhuichupa and Temosachic. It took us almost the entire day to move the animals the one mile and a half to this camp. On the way we had found some good quartz crystals in the baryte, about four inches high and one inch in width.

The country before us looked more forbidding than ever, as if it did not want us to penetrate any further into its mysteries, but our guide seemed to be quite at home here.

Our march toward Rio Chico was about thirty miles of ups and downs, ascending to a height of 7,600 feet and descending again some 3,000 feet. In the beginning it was almost impossible to make out the track; where it did not lead over bare rocks, it was nearly obliterated by overgrown grass. The first ascent was over a mile long in a straight line; then, after a little while, came the most arduous climbing I had until then ever attempted. Following the slope of the mountain, the track rose higher and higher in long zigzags, without any chance for the animals to rest, for at least three-quarters of a mile. It was necessary to push them on, as otherwise the train would unavoidably have upset, and one or the other have rolled down the declivity. One large white mule, El Chino, after it had almost climbed to the top, turned giddy at the "glory-crowned height" it had reached, and, sinking on its hind legs, fell backward and rolled heels over head down, with its two large canvas-covered boxes, like a big wheel. As luck would have it, it bumped against a low-stemmed old oak that cropped out of the hillside in an obtuse angle to it, some ninety feet below. Making one more turn up the stem, the mule was nicely caught between the forked branches, which broke the momentum, loosened the cargo, and caused the animal to fall back into the high grass. One box landed close by, the other, containing our library, pursued its course downward 200 feet further, bursting open on the way and scattering the wisdom of the ages to the winds, while the mule escaped without a scratch.