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In the Land of Cave and Cliff Dwellers

<h2 style="margin-top: 3em;">CHAPTER VI.</h2> <big>THROUGH THE SIERRA MADRES—ON MULE-BACK WESTWARD FROM CARICHIC.</big> As our next month was passed on mule-back, and Mexican mule-back at that, I think it would be not at all inappropriate to make a brief dissertation on this kind of brute for the necessary merits and demerits of the journey. The Mexican mule is a sort of a cross between a mountain goat and a flying squirrel, with the distinct difference that its surplus electricity flows off from the negative pole instead of the positive, as with the goat. It is in its meanderings on the mountain trail that it shines[207] resplendent, but with a luster wholly its own, that can be no more compared with any other than can the flash of the diamond be compared with the fire of the opal. I would like to place it alongside of the American mule for comparison in the "deadly double column" of the newspaper, but the Mexican beast would kick out the intervening rule and "pi" the type before enough was up to form an opinion. On the mountain trail this distinct species of mule was never known to fall, although he has an exasperating and blood-curdling way of stumbling along over it that would raise the hair of a bald-headed man on end. Many a time I have watched the mule I was compelled to ride with a view of discovering his methods of trying to frighten me to death as payment for past injuries. Oftentimes[208] the trail would lead past dizzy heights or cliffs, where one could look sheer down far enough to be dead before he reached the bottom should he fall, and every few feet along the trail of not over a foot in width it would tumble in a foot or so and again take up the original inclination of the mountain, or about that of the leaning tower of Pisa. Here the mule would always be sure to stick one foot over and stumble a little bit, but regain its equilibrium at the next step, having clearly done it intentionally, and for no other purpose than pure maliciousness. One can imagine the cool Alpine zephyr that is wafted up the vertebræ with sufficient force to blow the hair straight up on end. If you have touched the beast within the last three or four days with the whip, or dug into its sides with the spurs when it[209] was absorbed in melancholy reflections, it'll be sure to remember it when you are climbing over the comb of a cliff from two thousand to three thousand feet high, and at the least movement of your feet or twitching of your fingers it will throw its head high in the air, like a hound on the scent, and go stumbling over every pebble and blade of grass on the dangerous way, evidently trying to make you regret that you had ever tried to punish so delicate a creature. At any other time you can turn double somersaults on its back, or act like a raving maniac, and it will not increase its funereal march a foot a day as the result of your actions. Whenever a trail leads exceptionally near a cliff, before it turns on the reverse grade down or up hill, the Mexican mule never fails to go within an inch of the crest and let his[210] leg over with a slight quiver, as he turns around. All these mountain trails are full of little round, hard stones about the size of marbles, and even larger ones, hidden underneath a carpeting of pine needles. These are liable to make a mule stumble if two feet are on the stones at once, but this is very seldom, although they always go sliding over them on the steeper trails. It is wonderful how these round rocks, hidden under the pine needles on the trail or off it, will throw a human being prostrate if he dismounts a few minutes to take a walk on a slope and stretch his stiffened limbs. Of course the mule, under headway, is liable to walk over him before it can stop or the person pick himself up. There is another pastime in which the[211] Mexican mule delights, and in which you won't. It likes to deviate enough to go under every low-branched tree on the trail, and so universal is this trait of character that the trail seems to lead from one low tree or vine to another, just as the mule has a mind to make it. The dodging of limbs and branches among the pines, cypresses, and oaks in the high lands was not so bad, but down in the tierra caliente or hot lands, where brambly mesquite and thorny vines were tearing crescents out of your clothes until you looked like a group of Turkish ensigns, it was much more monotonous. The beast I was compelled to ride had one ear cut off near the head, and looked top-heavy in the extreme. As a mule's ears make up a goodly portion of it, as seen in elevation from the saddle on its[212] back, I was always frightened when he approached a cliff on the unabridged side, and instinctively leaned in to counterpoise the heavy weight that I thought might drag us over the precipice. He was familiarly known by the party as "Old Steamboat," "Old Lumber Yard," and other names indicating these characteristics; but he was large and so was I, and he fell to my lot. When I first saw his abbreviated auricular appendage, as a member of the "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Mules," I felt incensed upon hearing that it had been lost by the cut of a whip in the hands of a previous driver; but before we had been acquainted a week I had transferred all my sympathy from the mule to the man, whoever he may have been. On the level ground this mule was slower than[213] the Mexican cook, who took fifteen minutes to wash a spoon; but on a perilous path of half a foot in width, on a dizzy precipice, the way he could box the compass with the lone ear, so as to catch some faint sound at which he could get frightened at this inopportune time, made me wish I could cut off the other ear at about the third cervical vertebra. About half-past one on the first day out from Carichic we stopped for our lunch in a grove of beautiful pines in the valley of the Pasigochic, on the banks of a little stream of the same name. As I have said, we had ridden about fifteen miles from Carichic and were all very much in need of rest. Just before lunching we passed a number of Tarahumari Indians of the civilized class, working in a small field of about three or four acres.[214] Even in this small space there were a dozen others hard at work. Their dark, swarthy bodies were almost the color of the rich soil in which they toiled, making their white breechclouts and white straw hats, the only things they wore, look curious enough when they moved about like so many unpoetical ghosts, as seen at a distance. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG style="margin-top: 1em;" src="images/image23.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="324" alt="A Tarahumari Mountain Home." /></div> A TARAHUMARI MOUNTAIN HOME. We were now well into the Sierra Madre range, and although the scenery[215] was so far about the equal of the Alleghanies or Catskills, there was not much level ground for cultivation, and this was eagerly seized by the working natives, not only to raise crops for their own use, but to have some to sell; for from six to seven days' travel to the southwest was the richest silver district in the world, where all kinds of produce brought fabulous prices that would have enriched an American farmer in one season—flour forty cents a pound and other things in proportion. Indeed one of the best distinctions that could be made between the wild and civilized Tarahumaris is the fact that the former knows nothing of money nor makes any attempt to secure it, bartering directly by exchange with the civilized native for those things he wants and does not make; while the latter makes money[216] his medium of exchange, and seems to thoroughly appreciate its value. The midday lunch for a party of Mexicans moving through the mountains is quite long by comparison with American parties under like circumstances. It was two hours before we got away again. There are probably two reasons for this, one being that the midday is generally warmer with them than with us, although this did not apply to us in the cool, timbered regions of the high sierras; while the second reason is clearly found in the fact that they seldom feed their mules on these mountain trips, and must give them time to graze a fair-sized meal at noon. The Mexican packs and unpacks the mules twice a day, the American but once; for by feeding grain he can keep going until they want to camp, making it[217] much earlier than his Mexican brother, who, starting at three o'clock, has to go until six or seven to make a respectable afternoon's march. By three o'clock the American is generally in camp, having made the same distance and having done half the work. It is doubtful, however, if American mules would do as well here under like circumstances. After leaving the pretty and picturesque Pasigochic, a high hill is ascended, and late that afternoon we passed the highest point between the morning and evening camps, eighteen hundred feet. On the high hills were seen the beautiful madroña tree, or strawberry tree, with blood-red bark, and bright green and yellow leaves, and covered with white blossoms, so startling a mixture of colors that it would hardly be believed if painted[218] and put on exhibition. They were everywhere, from the merest bush in size to trees twenty and thirty feet in height. In form they are not unlike a spreading apple tree, with strongly contorted and twisted branches. Then there were many oaks of different kinds, the encino robles or everlasting oak, the white oak, and the little black variety. There were a dozen kinds I knew nothing of in my limited vocabulary of forest trees. The pines were beautiful, and in many places forty to fifty merchantable trees to the acre, straight as an arrow, and without a limb for sixty or seventy feet from the ground. In one or two clusters I noticed groups of pines like those an old lumberman once pointed out to me in the forests of Oregon as good mast timber. I have seen the same repeated dozens of[219] times on the slopes of the Sierra Madre range. This dense mass of spar and mast timber, as I shall call it, is nearly always found on the richest soil of the mountain, generally in the narrow little valleys where the silt from the sides is swept down by the rains until the soil is many feet deep. The great coniferous forest of the northern part of the Sierra Madre range of Mexico is probably one of the largest in the world (it is undoubtedly the largest virgin forest on either continent), and when its resources are opened by well-constructed wagon roads, or, better still, by a railway system, it will undoubtedly prove an enormous source of revenue to the Mexican States of Chihuahua and Sonora, and to no little extent those of Sinaloa and Durango—a source nearly as[220] profitable as their mineral wealth, and this is saying a great deal, for these States comprise the richest silver district in the world. That evening we camped in the valley of the Guigochic, on another beautiful mountain stream, where a little park of an acre or two gave our mules some sweet alpine grasses, which warranted us in believing that half the morning would not be passed in chasing over the hills to find stray mules, as is so often the case in Mexico when these beasts are turned loose to search for their food. We were all thoroughly tired with our first day's ride on mule-back, but nevertheless turned in to help the cook, as we realized that we wanted something to eat that night. The tent was pitched between two magnificent pines of enormous size, and I slept to the[221] music of the wind in their branches. We left our camp by the light of the camp fire next morning and started over the crest of one of the steepest mountains overlooking our camp. Halfway up the steep trail we passed two graves of stone heaps surmounted by rough wooden crosses. At this spot a man and his wife had been killed by the Apaches a few years ago. These same Apaches had penetrated too far into Tarahumari land, and after a disastrous encounter with the latter were fleeing themselves, when they met the defenseless Mexican and his wife and killed them. This was the farthest point west where a white person had been killed by Apache Indians in this part of Chihuahua. After climbing this hill of 1500 or 1600 feet our trail still led upward, the mountains growing steeper and[222] steeper. When we reached the top of one peak we would immediately begin the zigzag descent, then climb up another and down again. Sometimes the trail wound over a bald, rocky peak, where steps by long years of use had been worn deep in the soft rock; and into these little places the mules would carefully place their feet, there really being no other foothold for them. Again there would be a chain of gigantic stairs leading down some steep mountain side, where one could look hundreds of feet, and see tall trees that from such an elevation resembled small shrubs. The nimble and sure-footed animals would place all four feet together and jump down from one step to another, oftentimes more than their own height, so that one felt sure of being sent flying over the cliff, Again,[223] the trail would be over the loose, rolling stones, and the little animals would fairly slide down these dangerous places. By noon we reached the quaint little civilized pueblo of Tarahumari Indians named Naqueachic, they living in rude log houses instead of caves or cliff dwellings. At the pueblo of Naqueachic of civilized Tarahumaris I found a curious method of cooking. Over the fire the food was boiling in two different dishes. One contained a substance that looked like a compound of mucilage and brick dust. The mademoiselle in charge would take up a calabash gourd full, holding a pint or two, and, although the gourd was held mouth up all the time, before it was three feet above the pot it was completely emptied, so tenacious and stringy was the[224] substance, like the white of a soft boiled egg. This was repeated every five or ten seconds, evidently to keep it from burning. It is made from the soft, pulpy leaves or stalks of the nopal cactus; and is about as palatable to a white man as gruel and sawdust would be. The other pot contained some mixture of corn, beans, and probably one or two other more savage ingredients, a sort of Sierra Madre succotash. In one corner of the room—I might say the house, for there was only one room in the house—was a rude loom for weaving blankets, which they make from the wool of their mountain sheep, and which under all the circumstances are quite creditable. The ornamentation is not very great, and yet none of them lack this seemingly necessary part of[225] a blanket. These blankets are usually of a dark brown color, with one or two dark yellow stripes across them at the ends. Being "all wool and a yard wide" they are quite warm, much warmer than some Mexican woolen blankets that I bought at Chihuahua, which seemed better calculated to keep the heat out on the cold nights in the mountains than to keep it in. The civilized Tarahumaris are quite cleanly for savages, noticeably more so than the lower order of Mexicans, and yet there is plenty of room, great, unswept back counties of it, for improvement in this respect. After leaving the interesting little village of Naqueachic we at once started over a high range or crest some twenty-nine hundred feet above our level, and from the top could look down in a beautiful[226] valley on one of the most important Tarahumari villages in the Sierra Madres, the town of Sisoguichic. I would have liked to camp here for the night, but as there was no corn for the mules or grass for them to graze on we were compelled to proceed. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG style="margin-top: 1em;" src="images/image24.jpg" width-obs="400" height-obs="476" alt="Old Tarahumari Indian" /></div> OLD TARAHUMARI INDIAN. <hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" /> [227] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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