About a year ago, my brother, who is a very sagacious physician, advised
me to take the fresh liver of a mountain sheep for certain nervous
symptoms which were troublesome. None of the local druggists could fill
the prescription, and so it was decided that I should seek the materials
in person. With me went my friend J. B., the pearl of companions, and we
began the campaign by outfitting at San Diego, with a view to exploring
the resources of the sister republic in the peninsula of Lower
California. Lower California is very different from Southern California.
The latter is--well, a paradise, or something of that kind, if you
believe the inhabitants, of whom I am an humble fraction. The former is
what you may please to think.
At San Diego we got a man, a wagon, four mules and the needed provisions
and kitchen--all hired at reasonable rates, except the provisions and
kitchen, which we bought. Then we tried to get a decent map, but were
foiled. The Mexican explorer will find the maps of that country a source
of curious interest. Many of them are large and elaborately mounted on
cloth, spreading to a great distance when unfolded. The political
divisions are marked with a tropical profusion of bright colors, which
is very fit. A similar sense of fitness and beauty leads the designer to
insert mountain ranges, rivers and towns where they best please the eye,
and I have had occasion to consult a map which showed purely ideal
rivers flowing across a region where nature had put the divide of the
highest range in the State.
My furniture contained a hundred cartridges, a belt I always carry,
given by a friend, with a bear's head on the buckle (a belt which has
held, before I got it, more fatal bullets than any other west of the
Rockies), and my usual rifle. J. B. prepared himself in a similar way,
except the belt.
Starting south from San Diego, we crossed the line at Tia Juana, and
spent an unhappy day waiting on the custom house officials. They,
however, did their duty in a courteous manner, and we, with a bundle of
stamped papers, went on. The only duties we paid were those levied on
our provisions. The team and wagon were entered free under a
prospector's license for thirty days, and an obliging stableman signed
the necessary bond.
The main difficulty in traveling in Lower California lies in the fact
that you can get no feed for your animals. From Tia Juana east to
Tecate, where you find half a dozen hovels, there is hardly a house and
not a spear of grass for thirty miles. At Tecate there is a little
nibbling. Thence south for twenty-five miles we went to the Agua
Hechicera, or witching water; thence east twenty-five miles more to
Juarez, always without grass; thence south to the ranch house of the
Hansen ranch, at El Rayo, twenty-five miles more. There, at last, was a
little grass, but after passing that point we camped at Agua Blanca, and
were again without grass for thirty miles to the Trinidad Valley, which
once had a little grass, now eaten clean. Fortunately we were able to
buy hay at Tia Juana, and took some grain. Fortunately, also, we found
some corn for sale at Juarez. So, with constant graining, a little hay
and a supply of grass, either absent or contemptible, we managed to
pull the stock through.
Besides our four hired mules there was another, belonging to our man,
Oscar, which we towed behind to pack later. The animal was small in
size, but pulled back from 200 pounds to a ton at every step. Its sex
was female, but its name was Lazarus, for the overwhelming necessity of
naming animals of the ass tribe either Lazarus or Balaam tramples on all
distinctions of mere sex. We started, prepared for a possible, though
improbable, season of rain; but we did not count on extreme cold, yet
the first night out the water in our bucket froze, and almost every
night it froze from a mere skin to several inches thick. To give an idea
of the country, I will transcribe from a brief diary a few descriptions.
Starting from Tia Juana, we drove or packed for nearly 200 miles in a
southeasterly direction, until we finally sighted the Gulf and the
mountains of Sonora in the distance. At first our road lay through low
mountains, in valleys abounding in cholla cactus. From Tecate southward,
the country was rolling and clotted with brushwood, until you reach
Juarez. Juarez is an abandoned, or almost abandoned, placer camp. Here,
amid the countless pits of the miners, the pinons begin, and then, after
a short distance, the pine barrens stretch for forty miles. Beyond again
you pass into hills of low brush, and plains covered with sage and
buckweed, until finally you cross a divide into the broad basin of the
Trinidad Valley. This is a depression some twenty miles long and perhaps
five miles wide on the average, with a hot spring and a house at the
southwestern end, walled on the southeast by the grim frowning rampart
of the San Pedro Martir range, and on the other sides by mountains of
lesser height, but equal desolation.
We had intended at first to strike for the Cocopah range, near the mouth
of the Colorado River, and there do our hunting. Several reasons induced
us to change our plan and make for the Hansen ranch, where deer were
said to be plenty and sheep not distant; so we turned from Tecate
southward, made one dry camp and one camp near Juarez, and on the fifth
day of our journeying reached a long meadow, called the Bajio Largo, on
the Hansen ranch. We turned from the road and followed the narrow
park-like opening for four miles, camping in high pines, with water
near, and enough remnants of grass to amuse the animals. This region of
pine barrens occurs at quite an elevation, and the nights were cold. The
granite core of the country crops out all along in low broken hills, the
intervening mesas consisting of granite sand and gravel, and bearing
beside the pines a good deal of brush. Thickets of manzanita twisted
their blood-colored trunks over the ground, and the tawny stems of the
red-shank covered the country for miles. The red-shank is a lovely
shrub, growing about six or eight feet high, with broom-like foliage of
a yellowish green, possessing great fragrance. If you simply smell the
uncrushed shoots, they give a faint perfume, somewhat suggestive of
violets; and if you crush the leaves you get a more pungent odor, sweet
and a little smoky. Also, the gnarled roots of the red-shank make an
excellent cooking fire, if you can wait a few hours to have them burn to
coals. All things considered, the pine barren country is very
attractive, and if there were grass, water and game, it would be a fine
place for a hunter.
From our camp at Bajio Largo, J. B. and I went hunting for deer, which
were said to be plentiful. We hunted from early morning till noon,
seeing only one little fellow, about the size of a jack rabbit, scuttle
off in the brush. Then we decided to go home. This, however, turned out
to be a large business. The lofty trees prevented our getting any
extended view, and the stony gulches resembled each other to an annoying
degree. At last even the water seemed to flow the wrong way. So we gave
up the attempt to identify landmarks, and, following our sense of
direction and taking our course from the sun, we finally came again to
the long meadow, and, traveling down that, we came to camp. Here we
violated all rules by shooting at a mark--our excuse was that we had
decided to leave the vicinity without further hunting; and, at all
events, we spoiled a sardine box, to Oscar's great admiration.
In order to get a fair day's journey out of a fair day, we had to rise
at 4 or 5 o'clock. Oscar once or twice borrowed my watch to wake by, but
the result was only that I had to borrow J. B.'s watch to wake Oscar by;
so I afterwards retained the timepiece, and got up early enough to start
Oscar well on his duties.
The question of fresh meat had now become important. We left Bajio Largo
and drove to Hansen's Laguna, a shallow pond over a mile long, much
haunted by ducks. Here we made a bad mistake, driving six or eight miles
into the mountains, only to reach nowhere and be forced to retrace our
steps. Night, however, found us at El Rayo, the Hansen ranch house, and,
as it turned out, the real base of our hunting campaign. The Hansen
ranch is an extensive tract, named after an old Swede, who brought a few
cattle into the country years ago. The cattle multiplied exceedingly, to
the number, indeed, of several thousand, and can be seen at long range
by the passer-by. They are very wild and gaunt at present, and will
prance off among the rocks at a surprising rate before a man can get
within 200 yards of them. Ex-Governor Ryerson now owns these cattle, and
his major-domo, Don Manuel Murillo, a fine gray-haired veteran, learning
that I had known the Governor, gave me much friendly advice, and sent
his son to guide us well on the road to the Trinidad Valley and the
sheep land. He also provided us with potatoes and fresh meat, so that we
lived fatly thenceforth.
Our track lay past an abandoned saw-mill, built by the International
Company. Thence we were to go to Agua Blanca, the last water to be had
on the road; for the next thirty miles are dry. The saw-mill was built
to supply timber to the mining town of Alamo, some twenty-five miles
south. The camp is now in an expiring state and needs no timber, but is
said to shelter some rough and violent men. The road from the mill was
deep in sand, and our pace was slow. The darkness was coming cold and
fast when we finally drove on to the water and halted to camp.
Two men were there before us, with a saddle-horse each, and no other
apparent equipment. When we arrived, the men were watering their
animals, and at once turned their backs, so as not to be recognized.
Then they retired to the brush. We supped and staked out the mules, and
then sent Oscar to look up our neighbors. Oscar went and shouted, but
got no answer, and could find no men. We thought that our mules were in
some danger, and J. B., who is a yachtsman, proposed to keep anchor
watch. So Oscar remained awake till midnight, when he awoke me and
retired freezing, saying that he had seen the enemy prowling around. I
took my gun and visited the mules in rotation till 2:30. Then J. B.
awoke, chattering with cold, but determined, and kept faithful guard
until 5, when we began our day with a water-bucket frozen solid.
All our property remained safe, and a distant fire twinkling in the
brush showed that our neighbors were still there. After breakfast Oscar
again sought the hostile camp, and finally found a scared and innocent
Frenchman, who cried out, on recognizing his visitor:
"Holy Mary! I took you for American robbers from the line, and I have
lain awake all night, watching my horses."
From Agua Blanca we drove across the Santa Catarina ranch, for the most
part plain and mesa, covered with greasewood and buckbrush. This latter
shrub looks much like sage, except that its leaves are of a yellow-green
instead of a blue-green. It is said to furnish the chief nutrition for
stock on several great ranches. Certainly there was no visible grass,
but buckbrush can hardly be fattening. Toward night, we crossed the pass
into the Trinidad Valley and drove down a grade not steep only, but
sidelong, where the wagons both went tobogganing down and slid rapidly
toward the gulch. The mules held well, however, and before dark we were
camped near the hot spring at the house of Alvarez.
Our friend, Don Manuel Murillo, had recommended us both to Alvarez and
to his sister, Senora Paula, but both of these were absent. Don Manuel
had also urged us to get the Indian Anastasio for a guide.
"For heaven's sake," he said, "don't venture without a guide. You may
perish from thirst, as others have done before you."
We tried at first to hire burros and let our mules rest, but the Indian
who owned the burros stated that his terms were "one burro, one day, one
dollar"--an impudent attempt at robbery, which we resented.
We interviewed Anastasio, however, who said he would start at any
moment; and, leaving Oscar to guard the wagon, we packed two mules,
saddled two more for J. B. and myself, and, giving Anastasio the
tow-rope of a pack-mule, we started after him. Anastasio was the most
interesting figure of the trip, and I must be pardoned if I go into some
detail about him. He spoke some Spanish and understood a good deal. When
he did not understand, he never stated that fact, but either assumed a
stony look or answered at cross-purposes; so that we did not get to know
a great deal about each other for some time.
He had, too, a lingering remnant of the distrust of horses and mules
that his ancestors must have felt in Spanish times, and when his
pack-mule got a stone in her hoof, he observed it with anxiety from a
distance, but could not summon resolution to meddle with so serious a
matter.
Moreover his measure of distance was primitive. I would ask, for
instance, how many miles it was to our next stop. He might say three
miles for an all-day journey of six times that length, or he might tell
you that we were nine miles from a spot which we reached in half an
hour.
I then substituted leagues for miles, thinking that the Mexican usage
would be more familiar to him; but at last Anastasio said, rather
impatiently, that all this business of leagues and miles was rather
confusing and outside of his experience. We would reach the next water
shortly before sunset, and that was all the calculation he was
accustomed to, and quite close enough.
Aside from his knowledge of Spanish, Anastasio was indeed a fine
representative of the best of the stone age, and as we journeyed on, one
got an excellent idea of the life of the savage here in early times.
About 3 o'clock in the afternoon, we reached the only water spot on the
trail. Anastasio parted some withered reeds, and, looking earnestly,
said, "Dry." A short distance further up, he repeated the word, and yet
again, till, at his fourth attempt, he said, "Very little," and we
camped. By scraping away the mud and grass, we got a small gravelly
hole, and dipped out the slowly seeping water, a cup at a time. We thus
managed to give each of the mules a little in a pan, and to get a
canteen full for cooking.
Then I noticed Anastasio gathering wood, which I thought at first was
for general use, but I found it was a private pile, to be used, so to
speak, for bedding. Anastasio did not take the ax to secure his wood,
but smashed off mesquite branches with a rock or pulled out some old
root. He quite despised pinon and juniper logs, saying they gave no
heat--meaning, probably, that they burned out too soon.
We turned in soon after supper, and the night was cold. Anastasio said
he feared snow. The reason for his fear was soon evident. My bed was
about twenty feet from Anastasio's, and during the night I would turn
and watch him. He carried but one small blanket of about the texture of
a gunny sack. He lighted a long smouldering fire, stripped himself
naked, except a breech-clout, and, with his back to the coals and his
front protected by his gauzy blanket, he slept until the cold roused
him, when he put on more wood and slept again. I offered him four pairs
of warm horse blankets to sleep in, but that was not the thing. He said
that he needed to have the fire strike him in the small of the back, and
that he slept in that way always. So throughout the night, in my wakeful
moments, I saw the light reflected from his mahogany person. Evidently
snow or cold rain would be disastrous to people who need a fire all
night; for, with no covering against the cold and with fires
extinguished by storm, they might easily freeze to death.
We were packed and marching at 7:30 next morning, and to those who know
the inwardness of packing in winter, that statement means a good deal.
It means, for instance, that J. B. got up, at my summons, long before
dawn and cooked a splendid breakfast, and that the mules were caught and
grained and saddled, and the packs made and lashed, by the earliest
sun.
J. B. was a wonder. He seemed to enjoy giving his fellow mortals the
best breakfasts and suppers--for we never had any midday meals--that our
supplies could furnish. Always rising at the first call, in the dark,
sometimes with an accompaniment of snow or rain, he managed the
commissariat to perfection.
I in my humble way packed and saddled and did other necessary work, and
Anastasio regarded us with benevolent curiosity, though always ready to
get wood or water or mules when we asked him to do so.
We were now approaching the true desert. This term is not restricted to
the broad level sand wastes along the Gulf, but includes the arid and
waterless mountains adjacent, and this must be borne in mind when the
Mexicans tell you that sheep are to be found in the desert.
We passed the last of the brushy hills, and, crossing a small divide,
came over slopes of volcanic cinders to a little water spot with dwarf
willows and grass. This was our hunting camp. The country through which
our route had lain heretofore was altogether granitic, though one could
see hills apparently of stratified material in the distance. Toward the
desert, we met beds of conglomerate and trachyte, and mountains covered
with slide-rock, ringing flint-like clinkers from some great volcanic
furnace. But doubtless some accurate and industrious German has
described all this, in a work on the geology of the peninsula, and to
that valuable treatise I will refer you for further facts.
The vegetation had somewhat changed. There were more cactuses,
particularly the fleshy kind called venaga, though I noticed with
surprise the absence of the great fruit-bearing cactuses, the saguarro
and pitaya, all along our route. The Spanish daggers were very numerous,
as were also mescal plants, both of these forming veritable thickets in
places.
The venaga cactus is similar to the bisnaga, found in other parts of
Mexico, except in the disposition and curvature of the thorns. They are
stumpy plants, growing from a foot to three feet or so in height, and a
foot or more in diameter, like a thickset post. Those of us who
delighted in Mayne Reid's "Boy Hunters" will remember how the
adventurous young men saved themselves from dying of thirst by laying
open these succulent cactuses with their long hunting knives and
drinking the abundant juices. I have often and faithfully tried to
perform the same feat, out of reverence for my heroes, but failed to
find anything juicier than, say, a raw turnip--by no means satisfying as
a drink. The venagas are found on the mountains where sheep haunt, with
their hard prickly rinds broken and the interior hollowed out, and
Anastasio said that the sheep do this by knocking holes in the cactus
with their horns and then eating the inside.
This cactus country makes the third variety of wilderness encountered in
the peninsula. There are four: first, and best, the pine barrens;
second, the brushy hills and plains, covered with sage, greasewood and
buckweed; third, this spike-bearing volcanic region; and fourth, the
appalling desolation of the acknowledged desert.
The moment we had unloaded and watered our animals, Anastasio and I set
out to look for deer. Anastasio wore the spotted and tattered remnant of
a frock-coat, once green, given him by an Englishman, of whom I shall
say more later. He had guarachis, or sandals, on his feet, bare legs, a
breech-clout, and on his head a reddish bandanna handkerchief in the
last stages of decay; and as he peered over some rock, glaring long and
earnestly in search of game, he reminded one of those lean and wolfish
Apaches that Remington draws in a way so dramatic and so full of grim
significance.
Anastasio was fifty-one years old and had no upper incisors, but the way
he flung his gaunt leathern shanks over those mountains of volcanic
clinkers, armed with the poisoned bayonets of myriads of mescal, cactus
and Spanish dagger, was astonishing.
I told him that I was not racing and that he would scare the game. In
fact, he did start one little fellow, but he said he always saw the game
first, and for this day I was quite powerless to hold him in; so I
decided to return to camp before dark. This disgusted Anastasio greatly.
"In this way we shall never kill," said he. "We are going to suffer from
hunger." I assured him that we had plentiful supplies, but he had come
for meat. Unbounded meat had been the chief incentive for his trip, and
hungry he was determined to be.
The next day J. B. set out early with the red man. I arranged camp, and
two or three hours later took what I supposed was a different direction,
but soon encountered the pair returning. J. B. had a painful knee, and
Anastasio had started his racing tactics and kept them up until J. B.
was quite lame.
The Indian reported that he had seen sheep. J. B. had used the glass
without finding them, and then Anastasio had captured it and looked
through the wrong end, nodding and saying he could count five, very big.
This, I am sorry to say, was false and affected on Anastasio's part, and
J. B. was skeptical about the sheep altogether; but I knew how hard it
was to find distant game, when you don't know exactly how it should
appear. To reach the supposed sheep, the mountain must be climbed and
the crest turned, for the wind permitted no other course. J. B. did not
feel up to the task, and I directed him to camp. Anastasio and I climbed
for about four hours, and reached a position whence his sheep would be
visible. He was now discontented because J. B. had not lent him his gun.
No request had been made for the gun, to be sure, but I confess that a
request would have met with my earnest opposition in any event.
Evidently Anastasio's expectations of fresh meat were now so dim as to
cast serious shadows on my skill as a hunter; but, resigning himself to
the inevitable, he crawled to the summit of the ridge for a view. He
stared long and said he could make out one ewe lying down under a
juniper. I tried the glass. He was right. His unaided sight seemed about
equal in definition to my field-glass. On this occasion he declined to
use the glass, even with some appearance of disgust. We could get no
nearer unseen, and, though the distance was very great, I decided to
risk a shot.
I fired, in fact, two or three shots at the ewe, alarming her greatly,
when from beneath a cliff which lay below us a band streamed out. Two
big rams started off to the right. Anastasio and I ran down a bit, and I
tried a long shot at the leading ram. The distance was great, and the
run had pumped me a little. I missed. The second ram was still larger.
He stopped a moment at 150 yards and I dropped him. Anastasio grunted
satisfaction. I swung to the left, where the rest of the band was
journeying, sighted at the shoulder of a young ram and fired. The ball
passed through my intended victim, dropping him, and entered the eye
of a yearling ram who stood behind, thus killing two rams at one shot--a
most unusual accident.
[Illustration: ROCKY MOUNTAIN AND POLO'S SHEEP, DRAWN TO SAME SCALE.]
The rest of the band were now quite distant, and, though I fired several
shots, at Anastasio's desire--he said he wanted a fat ewe--none took
effect.
I cleaned the sheep and skinned out the big head. Anastasio took one
small ram entire on his back, supporting it by a rope passed over the
top of his head, and started down with it, while I followed after with
the big horns. It was 1 o'clock. The head might have weighed thirty-five
pounds fresh. It grew to weigh 1,500 pounds before dark. Stumbling down
through the slide-rock, with legs full of venomous prickers, I passed
below camp without noticing it, and was well on the other side, when I
thought I had gone about far enough, and shouted. J. B.'s voice answered
across a small hill, and I discovered that he had never reached camp at
all, but had found a water spot, and wisely decided not to leave it
without good reason.
I scouted a bit to the west, but found unfamiliar country, and, as the
sun had set, we were seemingly about to stay by that water all night,
when I turned around and saw a pale column of smoke rising above the
crest of the ridge against the evening sky.
At once we marched around the ridge, and, as we rose over the divide, we
saw the whole hillside flaming with signal fires. Our dear old Anastasio
had become alarmed and set fire to fifteen or twenty dead mescals in
different places to guide us home. God bless a good Indian!
With vast content we prepared and ate a luxurious supper. Anastasio,
however, fearing that he might be hungry in the night, impaled all the
ribs of one side of the ram on a pole and planted it in a slanting
position over the fire. Thus he was enabled to put in his time during
his wakeful moments, and face the prospect of a remote breakfast without
discouragement.
The next day, I spent the morning in washing, resting, and cutting
spikes out of my legs. Anastasio packed in the second small ram, and ate
ribs and slept. Then, in the afternoon, we got the rest of the big
fellow down. Anastasio, to make his load lighter, smashed off the shanks
with a stone, although he carried a knife in his belt--a striking trick
of heredity.
And then we talked. "The Trinidad Valley is not my country," said
Anastasio; "this is my country. Yonder, under that red rock on the
mountain side, about five miles away, there is a spring in the gulch on
the edge of the desert. I was born there, and lived there twenty years
with my father's family. Here where your camp is"--about twenty feet
square of slide-rock level enough to stand on--"we sowed crops. We
scraped a hole between the stones with our hands, put in squash seeds,
watered them by carrying water from the spring in our hands and raised
several hills."
So he went on, not in so connected a way, but showing, bit by bit, his
manner of life. His tribe, which he called the Kil-ee-ou, must have been
very restricted in numbers at best. His territory was a few leagues of
desert, or almost desert, mountains, every yard of which he knew by
heart, while just over the ridge dwelt the Cocopahs, his mortal enemies.
Sometimes a score of men armed with bows would start a tribal hunt for
deer, though the sheep were beyond their means of attack. Sometimes they
journeyed a few leagues to the Gulf to eat mussels. We could see the
great blue sheet and the leagues of salt incrustations glimmering white
on the hither side, and at one spot on the horizon the blue peak of some
Sonora mountain rose out of the seeming ocean.
But a few deer and mussels and a half dozen hills of squashes could not
fill the abyss of the Indian appetite. The stand-by was roasted mescal.
These plants grow in great numbers in the country adjoining the desert,
and at every season there are some just right for roasting. The Indians
selected these and cooked them for two or three days in a hole in the
ground, by a process called tatema, similar in principle to a clam-bake.
This roasting converts the starchy leaves and heart into a sugary mass,
so that the resulting food is something like a sweet fibrous beet. The
Indian's life really lay in gathering and roasting mescal. And when a
storm prevented the necessary fires, the tribe passed days, often many
days, without food.
So much for Anastasio's early life. A year ago, he told us, he went
hunting with two Americans. One of them came from under the earth, where
there were six months of night, and had passed two seas and been a
month on the train. We supposed, from this, that Anastasio had served as
guide to an Englishman, whose home he described at the Antipodes. The
six months of night were, perhaps, represented by the London fogs, and,
if he passed a month on the train, he must have come by the Southern
Pacific. The Englishman had presented Anastasio with the very
undesirable gaberdine I have before described. Anastasio said that the
Englishman shot quail in the head every time with his rifle, but on
meeting a band of eleven sheep he fired nine shots without hitting.
Anastasio said he trembled, but I incline to think that the Indian had
run him out of breath. Finally the Englishman secured two ewes and a
lamb, after three weeks of hunting.
Look at my fortune! A single day on the mountain, and three rams to show
for it; one with horns that are an abiding splendor--sixteen inches
around the base and forty-two inches on the outer sweep.
I thought at first that the horns made more than one complete spiral,
but, on leveling them carefully, I saw that the entire curve would not
be complete without the points, which were smashed off. In this
connection it is only fair to consider that I carried my lucky bear's
head belt, and invariably sacrificed to the Sun, as several ragged
garments, hung on spikes and branches, may still testify.
The weather threatened storm. J. B.'s leg would not permit him to hunt.
Anastasio was full of meat, eating roasted ribs night and day, beside
his regular meals, and we decided to retreat.
I noticed that the sheep hides had little of the under wool that the
Northern sheep have in December, nor were the animals fat, though the
flesh was sweet and tender, and the livers had their desired medicinal
effect.
Anastasio said it was customary to hunt in summer, when the sheep were
fat, and were compelled to resort to the water holes. Aside from the
meanness of taking advantage of the animals' necessities, the summer is
a bad season for hunting, both because the flesh is rank and spoils
quickly, and the heat and insects are intolerable.
We packed our mules in a gentle rain, and Anastasio made a great bundle
of rejected meat for his own use. To get rope, he slightly roasted the
leaves of the Spanish dagger, tore the hot spikes in shreds with his
tough fingers and knotted the fragments into a strong, pliable cord.
In two days we were again in the Trinidad Valley, and in two days
more--one of them passed in facing a cold, driving storm, of great
violence--we had reached our old friend, Don Manuel Murillo, at El Rayo.
Here we lay over a day to rest the animals, and Don Manuel again played
the part of a good angel in letting us have some hay.
I tried a shot at a duck on a little pond. The shot was a costly
success. The duck died, but I had to wade for his remains through many
yards of frozen mud and dirty water. The duck, though lean, was tender.
My last hunt was for deer at El Rayo, with a boy of Don Manuel's for
guide. Toward noon I saw two deer and shot them. I do not at present
know just how to class them. The tail is that of the ordinary mule-deer,
or blacktail, of Colorado and Montana, but there is no white patch on
the rump.
The most of the deer in Lower, as well as in Southern, California have
little white on their rumps, as in these specimens, but the upper
surface of the tail is generally dark. The majority of the animals also
are smaller than the typical mule-deer of our Northern States, but
whether the differences between the two are great enough and constant
enough to form a defined variety, some more competent naturalist must
decide. Pending authoritative decision, I will submit, as a working
theory of a purely amateur kind, this suggestion: that the Mexicans are
right in saying that the northern zone of their country contains two
varieties of deer--one a large animal, called "buro," identical with our
Northern mule-deer; the other called "venado," a mule-deer too, but only
a cousin of the "buro," much smaller, and with the white parts of the
mask, throat, rump and tail either absent or much diminished in extent.
Our journey home was accomplished in the worst weather. Snow, cold rain,
gales of surprising fury, made life a struggle; but we jumped at every
chance for progress, and finally crossed the line twenty-five days after
we had left it--tired, ragged, dirty, but with our mules alive and our
hearts contented.
Our experience of the peninsula indicated that there were few
inhabitants of any kind, brute or human. We saw hardly a dozen rabbits
on the trip. There were some quail and many ducks, but the latter were
visitors only. Deer were very scarce, and there were but a few half-wild
cattle visible.
As for human beings, there was not an inhabited house on our road from
Alvarez Place, in the Trinidad Valley, to El Rayo, a distance of
fifty-five miles; nor from El Rayo to Juarez, twenty-five miles more.
Indeed, except for the few hovels at Tecate, the houses for the rest of
the way were hardly more numerous. And yet we had a strong impression
that the country had nearly all the population it could support. Given a
moderately dry year, and the part of Lower California which we visited
can be thought fit only for bogus land companies and goose-egg mines;
or, yes, it might be an ideal spot for a health resort or a penal
colony.
_George H. Gould._