SONORA--ALONG THE SONORA RAILWAY--HERMOSILLO--GUAYMAS, AND ITS
BEAUTIFUL HARBOR--FISHING AND HUNTING ABOUT GUAYMAS.
From Deming, N. M., it is but a five or six hours' ride by rail to
Benson in Arizona, the initial point of the Sonora railway, a branch
of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé, and extending to the seaport
of Guaymas in Mexico. The ride from Benson consumes two days, and the
route is through the mountains, down the lovely, fertile valleys, and
across the flat, tropical country of the seacoast. It is a ride of
great novelty and of surpassing beauty throughout the entire distance.
After the train reached Nogalles, a town which is half in the United
States and half in Mexico, it was made up in regular Mexican fashion
of first, second, and third class coaches; and, from the number of
Mexicans aboard, it appeared they were as much given to travel as their
more active neighbors of the North; with this difference, however:
that where they can save a penny by going second or third class they
do so. This fact removes an interesting feature of Mexican travel from
the sight of the average American tourist, for, as a rule, he prefers
comfort to the study of the picturesque in his fellow-travelers.
When we reached Hermosillo, a place of about ten thousand people, the
station was filled with vendors of oranges; and such oranges I never
tasted elsewhere, although I have sampled that fruit in some of the
most famous groves of Florida and California. In sweetness, delicious
flavor, and juiciness they surpass all others; in fact it is impossible
to find a poor or insipid one among all you can buy and eat. It is a
pity there is so little market for this very superior fruit. The entire
country from Hermosillo down to the coast seems to be a perfect one
for orange culture, and for all other semi-tropical fruits. The prices
paid for oranges are very reasonable, for much more is grown than can
be consumed, and there seems to be little outlet for the surplus in any
direction.
Just before reaching Guaymas the railway winds among the coast range
of mountains, and crosses a shallow arm of the sea that is bridged
with a long trestle. As you pass over the bridge you can look across
the harbor through the gaps in the steep mountains straight out to
sea, or rather into the Gulf of California. Again you are treated to
long vistas of the beautiful mountain-locked harbor as the train winds
around the steep peaks and you approach the old seaport. Before going
to this port, the principal one on the Gulf of California, I made up my
mind there would be comparatively little to say regarding it, as it is
not only the terminus of a railway, but is also located on one or two
lines of steamship travel, and would therefore be almost as well known
as some California resorts or other famous places of the Pacific coast.
It proved, on the contrary, to be seldom or never visited by tourists.
I could find nothing about it in my numerous guidebooks and volumes
devoted to Mexico, but nevertheless discovered a great deal of interest
in this typical old town that was both novel and attractive. When the
Sonora railway first reached here a number of years ago everything
was ready to be "boomed." A hotel to cost a quarter of a million was
started on a beautiful knoll overlooking the picturesque harbor, but
after about one-tenth that amount had been put into the foundation and
carriage way leading up the hill it was given up.
It may not be inappropriate to say that all of Guaymas is very much
like the hotel--it has a fine foundation, but not much of anything
else, although its sanitary conditions for a winter resort are nowhere
else excelled. The first day you arrive you get a sample of the weather
in mild, warm days, with cool nights, that will not vary a hair's
breadth in all your stay. The harbor is picturesque in the extreme. It
is completely landlocked, and swarms with a hundred kinds of fishes. It
looks not unlike the harbor of San Francisco, and, although smaller, is
far more interesting in the many beautiful vistas it opens to sight as
one sails over its intricate waters. If it should ever become a popular
winter resort no finer fishing or sailing could be had than in the
harbor of Guaymas and the Gulf of California. A constant sea or land
breeze is blowing in summer and winter, but it is never strong enough
to make the waters dangerous. I have been fishing several times, and
certainly the piscatorial bill of fare, as shown by my experience, has
been an extremely varied one.
While off the shore in the harbor one afternoon I caught a shark
measuring a little over six feet in length, which gave me a tussle of
about a quarter of an hour before I could pull it alongside and plunge
a knife into its heart. This last operation, be it observed, was not
so much to end its own sufferings as to prevent those of other and
better fish, and maybe a human being or so, in the near future. The
natives told me, however, that it was only the large spotted or tiger
shark, a species seldom seen there, that will deign to mistake the leg
of a swimmer for the early worm that is caught by the bird. None of
the shark kind enter the inner harbor where a sensible person would
naturally bathe, as he wants enough water to hide his movements from
his prey, and this condition seldom exists in the inner harbor. Indeed
its name, Guaymas, borrowed from that of an Indian tribe, means a cup
of water; and it is aptly applied, for the harbor is so landlocked
and protected that seldom more than the slightest ripple disturbs its
mirror-like surface, although breezes that will waft sailboats prevail
throughout the day.
[Illustration: A VIEW OF GUAYMAS HARBOR.]
As a further part of my fishing experience we caught a number of
perch-like fish called by the people _cabrilla_ (meaning little
goat-fish, on account of some fancied resemblance to that animal, so
numerous in the settled parts of Mexico), and which is pronounced the
sweetest fish known on the Pacific coast. They are not as big as one's
hand, and, of course, it takes a great many of them to make a mess for
a few persons, but once a mess is secured it cannot be equaled in all
the catches known to the piscatorial art. Another fish that we secured,
and which the natives call _boca dulce_ (sweet mouth), looked like a
German carp. It had a pale blue head, weighed from two to four pounds,
and seemed to run in schools, with no truants whatever to be found
outside the school. One might fish a day for the _boca dulce_ and never
get a bite, but on the instant one was caught you could haul them in
over the side of the boat as fast as you could bait and drop your hook,
the biting ceasing as suddenly as it began. They are a delicious fish
for eating, and should Guaymas ever become the large-sized city which
its favorable position seems to promise, the _boca dulce_ will furnish
one of the leading fishes for its market.
While we were there the United States Fish Commission steamer
_Albatross_ came into the harbor from a long cruise in investigating
the fishes of the Gulf of California, and Captain Tanner of the United
States Navy told a small party of us that there were enough fish in
the Gulf of California to supply all the markets of Mexico and the
United States. Singularly enough, nearly all this great fish supply
in the Gulf was along the eastern coast of this American Adriatic, or
on the Sonora and Sinaloa side, rather than on or along the coast of
Lower California. A good system of railways to the interior mining
camps is needed to make this great supply available to the wealth of
this naturally wealthy, but now poorly developed country. This will
inevitably come, for no one can travel in Northern Mexico without
clearly seeing it has a grand and wonderful future ahead, that will
greatly strengthen us if we are in the ascendant, and that can
correspondingly hurt us in an hour of need if we are not. The tide is
rapidly setting in our favor, if we take proper advantage of it.
When I first sailed on the waters of the Gulf of California, some
eighteen years ago, its commerce, although small indeed, was
three-fourths in the hands of Europeans, while to-day three-fourths
of it is American, and only the other fourth European. We labor under
one disadvantage, however, and that is we do not attempt to cater to
another's taste, even though to do so would be money in our pockets.
There are peculiar lines of cheap prints and cottons made in Europe
that are sold only on the west coast of Mexico, not a yard finding its
way to any other part of the world. Now, while our goods command higher
prices, and a great deal finds a market there, it does not "exactly
fill the bill," and Americans, probably from not knowing the real wants
of these people, do not manufacture the needed articles, and drive
foreign stuff from the Mexican market. The ignorance of our people as
to the commercial value of Mexico, and especially those parts off the
principal lines of railway, is certainly great, and is losing us money
now, and a more important influence later. Our enormous advantage of
contiguity is pressing us forward in spite of ourselves, and we ought
to sweep nearly every line of commerce in Mexico from the hands of
foreigners--a fact that is most emphatically true of the northern part
of that rich territory.
After cooking our lunch of _cabrillas_ and _boca dulces_ on the
northern or inside shore of San Vincente Island we made a visit to
the caves on the southern or seaward face of the same island. This
led us through a little gorge between two high, beetling cliffs,
into which the sea had excavated the caves we were to see. Through,
or rather under, this gorge the waters pour into a small underground
funnel of the solid rock before they reach the little lagoon beyond.
At all hours the reverberation of the rushing tide is like thunder, as
it beats backward and forward in its prison. The upper crust of the
funnel is pierced with occasional holes and crevices, and at certain
stages of water these are the mouths of so many spouting geysers, as
each wave comes in and beats against the stone roof that confines it.
Woe to the person who tries to cross just as a high wave reaches its
maximum strength in the cave beneath! He will get the quickest and most
effectual bath of his lifetime. Once on the seaward face a long line of
caves is presented to view.
[Illustration: CAVE OF SAN VINCENTE.]
The high hills here are hard conglomerate, and the waves of the Gulf of
California, as we call it (the Gulf of Cortez as it was first named,
and is yet called by most Mexicans), have cut far under the cliffs,
leaving overhanging masses of rock, sometimes hundreds of feet in
depth, as measured along the roofs under which we walked. They looked
forbidding enough, and we feared that a few hundred tons might at
any moment fall on our heads; for here and there could be seen just
such deposits in the shallow waters, while occasional islands were
discerned along the front of some of the caves which must have been
formed when greater masses fell. But these fallings were without doubt
centuries apart, and all these caves fully as safe to explore as caves
in general. At any rate, every thought of danger was soon lost in
the delicious coolness; for the day on the shining water and white
sand beach had been very warm, although we hardly noticed it in the
excitement of our sport. The coloring in the largest cave was beautiful
beyond description. The sketch of our artist is as good as black and
white can make it; but it conveys little idea of the reality, save
form and contour. There was a narrow ledge on the skirts of the cave
where one could find a way to enter, except at the highest tide or when
a storm was beating landward, which is seldom the case, and never known
during the winter months.
Guaymas has a wealth of natural attractions for the winter visitor or
traveler, but hardly any reared by the hand of man to make his stay
agreeable in a strictly physical sense. The hotels are all Mexican,
and while they should be judged from that standpoint, probably to an
American they would be very uncomfortable. Our hotel was a curious
compound of saloon, kitchen, dining room, and court, all in one, with
sleeping rooms ranged along two sides. One end of the building opened
on a street, and the other directly on the beautiful bay, within a
stone's throw of the water. The views in all directions from the water
front of that simple hotel were indescribably lovely, causing one to
forget the discomforts of the interior and the lack of cleanly food.
Even the inhabitants, in their Nazarene primitiveness, are very
interesting. Although Guaymas claims seven thousand within her gates,
her waterworks are of the same character as those of the ancient
Egyptians. The chief description I shall give of them is a picture of
one of the public wells just in the suburbs of the town. The water from
these wells is used only for sprinkling the streets, and for household
purposes, such as washing, it being totally unfit for drinking. That
precious fluid is brought from a spring fully seven miles back in
the mountains. We were told that this water could be easily piped into
the town, and that there was some talk of an attempt to do so, for the
sleepy old place is beginning to awaken to the fact that the world is
moving ahead.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE WELLS OF GUAYMAS.]
Near the town is a sort of pleasure garden, or ranch, as it is
sometimes called. It is owned by an industrious German, who sank a
number of wells on the place, and obtained warm, cold, and mineral
waters, and established baths, which are very popular with the people
and make the place quite a resort. There are groves of all kinds of
tropical fruits and plants, with flowers in the greatest profusion;
the brilliant, gorgeous flowers of the tropics growing beside the more
modest ones of the temperate zone, and making the arid, rocky region
beautiful with blossoms and shade. During the rainy season this country
is the home of the tarantula, the centipede, and the scorpion, for they
flourish equally as well as the flowers.
In one of the rooms of the American Consulate, facing the principal
plaza, is lodged a piece of a shell, thrown there, singularly enough,
by an American man-of-war when Guaymas was taken in 1847, during the
Mexican War. At that time the _Portsmouth_ and the _Congress_ entered
the harbor, shelled the town, and took it. The piece of shell referred
to lodged in the huge wooden rafters of the building, and as these
are never covered in the simple architecture of that country its
rusty, round side is plainly visible from beneath. From the positions
assigned to the vessels it is said to have been the _Congress_,
she of _Monitor-Merrimac_ fame afterward; and as the American flag
still floats from the staff directly over the shell it is quite an
interesting and historic piece of iron. Very few Americans, however,
associate the quiet little town of Guaymas with any event of the war
waged so long ago that its memories are almost lost in the later and
greater war of civil strife.
In the good old times Guaymas used to have revolutions of its own.
Whenever a governor of the place was financially embarrassed, or
imagined he would soon be replaced by some fresh favorite from the City
of Mexico, he would issue a proclamation and send around to merchant
after merchant to take up a collection. If they had the temerity to
object, not wishing to part with their worldly goods in that fashion,
one of their number was selected as an example, taken out and shot,
which had the desired effect of causing the others to come to time. We
had the pleasure of meeting one of the old-time governors who had ruled
in this fashion. He now holds an important position, is a man of great
wealth, and a distinguished citizen--a tall, fine-looking man--but I
could not help thinking he looked the born pirate, and would enjoy
playing the despot again if he had the opportunity.
The great mass of the working class of this western part of Mexico are
the Yaqui and Mayo Indians, portions of these tribes being civilized,
and others adhering to their wild and nomadic life in the mountains.
They are one of the most interesting features of the country.
For years savage members of the Yaqui tribe have waged bloody and
successful wars against the Mexican Government, and have been the
principal cause of the slow development of the Gulf coast; but since
the death of their famous leader Cajeme they have been peaceable
and quiet. As a race they are remarkably stalwart, handsome, and
aggressive, and are said to be able to endure any extremes of heat or
cold. They are enlisted in the service of the government whenever it
is possible, and make the best soldiers obtainable for this particular
country.
While in Guaymas I heard from reliable sources that the _jabali_,
peccary, or Mexican wild hog, was quite plentiful along the line of
the Sonora Railway, and determined to get up a small party and attack
these pugnacious pigs in their own haunts. The _jabali_ (pronounced
hah-va-lee in the Mexican version of the Spanish language) is the wild
hog of Northern Mexico, and while one of them is in no wise equal to
the wild boar of other countries, still, as they go in droves, and
are equal in courage, they more than make up in numbers all they lose
by being considered individually. Up to this time my game list had
included polar bears, chipmunks, moose, jack rabbits, grizzlies, snipe,
elk, buffalo, snow birds, reindeer, vultures, panther, and others,
but as yet the scalp of no peccary dangled from my belt. So one fine
morning we pulled out for Torres station, about twenty or twenty-five
miles up the railway, where peccaries could be expected, and where
horses (better speaking, the bucking broncho of the Southwest) could
be procured, together with guides, ropers-in, etc.
The fertile soil and warm sunshine of Sonora quickens the imagination
in a way unknown in the northern part of the United States, with its
colder clime and cloudy skies. The day before starting I had done a
good deal of telegraphing up the Sonora railway to learn just where
these peccaries might be the most numerous, and the replies were
enthusiastic as well as comical. Carbo sent back word that the section
men on the railway had to "shoo" the _jabalis_ off the track so as to
repair it; another station reported that wild hogs were seen every
day except Sundays; another station said there was a Yaqui Indian
guide there who went out with a lasso and a long, sharpened stick,
and brought in a peccary every morning before breakfast; while Torres
thought I could have _jabali_ about three miles from there. This was
the most modest report and the nearest station, so I decided on Torres.
The country along the southern portion of the Sonora railway would
be interesting in the extreme to one unfamiliar with tropical or
sub-tropical countries. Its vegetation was most curious, and the
surrounding country picturesque. Fine scenery can, indeed, be viewed
in a thousand places in our own country, but it is not characterized
with such a wonderful plant growth as we saw that morning on our way
to the slaughter grounds of the peccaries. Here was the universal
mesquite, looking like a dwarfed apple tree, and that affords the
brightest fire of any wood ever burned. The tender of our engine was
filled with it, and, as far as fuel was concerned, we could have made
sixty miles an hour, had we wished to do so. The wood of the mesquite
is of a beautiful bright cherry red; many a time I have wondered if
this plentiful, tough, and twisted timber of the far Southwest could
not be utilized in some way as a fancy wood; certainly a more beautiful
color was never seen. Occasionally I thought I saw my old friend the
sagebrush; then there was the ironwood (_palo de hierro_), that looks
like a very fine variety of the mesquite. Its name is derived from its
hardness, and is well deserved. It requires an ax to fell each tree,
and as the quality of different trees is always the same, and that of
different axes is not, even this ratio of one ax to one tree has to
be changed occasionally, and always in favor of the tree. There was a
story going the rounds that a tramp, who had wandered into that country
(tramps sometimes get lost and find themselves in Sonora just once),
with the usual appetite of his class applied for something to eat. In
reply he was told, if he would get out a certain number of rails for
a fence, the proprietor would give him a week's board. It was, as he
thought, about a day's work that had been assigned him, and bright
and early next morning he sallied out with his ax on his shoulder.
Unfortunately the most tempting tree he met was an ironwood. Very late
in the evening he returned with the ax helve on his arm. "How many
rails did you split to-day?" was asked. "I did not split any, but I
hewed out one," was the reply; and then he resigned his position.
There is also the _palo verde_, named for its color, with its bright,
vivid green leaf, twig, and bark, and its pretty yellow blossoms,
making a beautiful contrast with the more somber green of other trees.
Occasionally great rows of cottonwoods (the _alamo_ of the Mexicans)
show the line of water courses, while a number of shrubs covered with
blossoms are seen, apparently half tree, half cactus, so thick are
their brambles and thorns. But as to cactus! There are five hundred
species in America, of which Mexico has a large plurality, and the
majority of these can be found along this end of the Sonora railway.
There is the giant pitahaya, sometimes with a dozen arms, each as big
as an ordinary tree, and from thirty to forty feet in height. Each arm
has a score of pulpy ribs along its sides, and each rib has a button
of thorns every inch along its length, each button having twenty or
twenty-four great thorns sticking from it. I was told that when a
hunter is sorely pressed by peccaries, if he will climb a pitahaya
about ten feet, the thorns are so thick and terrible in their effect
that the peccaries will not dare to follow him, hardy and venturesome
as they are. Then there is the choya or cholla cactus, about as high as
one's waist. You can go around a pitahaya as you would a tree, but when
you find a field of chopalla (field of choyas) you might as well try
to go around the atmosphere to get to a given point. The cholla will
lean over until it breaks its back trying to get in your way, so that
it can dart a dozen or two spines into your flesh. They are the worst
of all; I could use almost as much of my readers' time in describing
different cactuses as I used of my own in picking them out of my flesh
after the peccary hunt was over, but I forbear.
[Illustration: A MEXICAN CACTUS]
When we reached Torres nobody seemed to know anything about peccaries,
and as the train stopped there for dinner we had plenty of time to
talk it over. It then appeared that wild hogs were to be found all
the way from Guaymas to Nogalles, but at this time of the year were
very scarce, and seen only in twos or threes, and not in droves.
In droves they are pugnacious and will easily bay; but in pairs
or very small numbers they are more timid, and not until they are
exhausted or overtaken by a swifter pursuer will they show fight. No
_jabalis_ could be depended on, and, as I had only a day or two to
spare, I determined to move on to Carbo, where the prospects seemed
better, and which place we reached in time for supper. This over we
busied ourselves about our horses, mules, guides, dogs, etc. The
superintendent of the railway at Guaymas had kindly volunteered to
telegraph to any point and secure us a Yaqui Indian or two to guide us
after the _jabalis_, and any number of hundreds of dogs to bay them if
needed. He said he could guarantee the dogs (and so could anyone else
who knew anything about a Mexican village), but he felt dubious about
the Yaqui Indians. We secured four broncho horses and two dejected
mules for the next day, and then went to sleep. I unrolled my blankets
and buffalo robe, laid them down on the railway station platform, and,
as the night was cold, had a fine sleep. The morning broke as clear
as crystal, and we were up bright and early; but in spite of all our
Caucasian hurry we did not get away until shortly after nine o'clock.
Our first destination was a ranch two miles to the southeast of the
town, owned by Colonel Muñoz. Here we were to get a Yaqui Indian for
a guide, and learn the latest quotations as to the peccary market.
Shortly after rising in the morning heavy clouds were seen in the
northeast, which kept spreading and coming nearer and nearer, with
vivid flashes of lightning and loud rumblings of thunder, until just
about the time we were halfway to the ranch of Colonel Muñoz it broke
over us with the full fury of a Sonora thunderstorm. Its worst feature
was its persistency. I never saw a thunderstorm hang on for six or
seven hours before in all my life, but this did, much to our personal
discomfort, and, worst of all, to the serious detriment of the hunt.
Arriving at the ranch, we found that the Yaqui Indian guide, who, by
the way, was a famous peccary hunter, was absent, working on a distant
part of the hacienda. Now a hacienda or ranch in Sonora is about as
large as a county in most of our States, and it requires efficient
messenger service to get over one inside of half a day. We sent for
him, however, and as a small boy present volunteered the information
that he thought he could guide the party to where a pig might be
lurking in the brush, we concluded we would take a short spin with
him while waiting for the Yaqui Indian. He based his expectation of a
_jabali_ on the rain that had been falling, which sent the wild hogs
out, made it easy to trail them, and brought them to bay sooner than if
the weather had been dry. There was no horse for the youngster to ride,
so he was taken on behind one of the party, and we started out in the
pelting rain after "the poor little pigs," as one of the señoras of
the hacienda put it. As the poor little pigs have been known to keep a
man up a tree for three days, we felt more like wasting ammunition than
sympathy on them.
[Illustration: A MEXICAN JABALI.]
The rain now came down in torrents, vivid sheets of lightning played in
our faces, and the rumbling of the thunder was often so loud we could
not hear the shoutings of one another. Now, indeed, we were anxious to
get a peccary; for while a little rain helps the hunter in his chase
after wild hogs, such a deluge is entirely against him. The dry gullies
were running water that would swim a peccary, and this was in their
favor in escaping from the dogs, for I should have said we had two dogs
with us: one a noble-looking fellow for a hunt, and resembling a Cuban
bloodhound, the other a most dejected-looking whelp, a cross between a
mongrel and a cur. The whole affair was the sloppiest, wettest failure,
and about noon we got back to the hacienda, looking like drowned rats.
A good Mexican dinner of chili con carne, red peppers, tabasco, and
a few other warm condiments was never better appreciated, and as the
Yaqui Indian had put in an appearance we crawled back into our wet
saddles, with our clothes sticking to us like postage stamps, and once
more sallied out. While we were eating dinner the rain had ceased, and
our otherwise dampened hopes had gone up in consequence; but when we
were about a mile away it seemed as if the very floodgates of heaven
had opened and let all the water down the back of our necks. Gullies
we had crossed in coming out almost dry now ran noisy, muddy waters
up to the horses' middle, and in some places halfway up their sides.
Thus we kept along for an hour or so, wet to the skin, and even under
the skin, cholla cactus burs sticking to us until we looked like sheep.
About two o'clock we heard loud shouts, and away we tore through cactus
spines and shrubby thorns, for it was a sign there were peccaries
ahead. Indeed they were ahead, and we chased them for eight miles. The
ground was slippery, and the unshod ponies went sliding around over it
like cats on ice with clam shells tied to their feet. I weighed 265
pounds, and my small pony not over two or three times as much, and how
he kept up with the others, swinging through choyallas and around thick
mesquite brush is yet a mystery.
[Illustration: CHASING THE JABALIS IN THE RAIN]
Occasionally a horse would get a bunch of cactus in his fetlock joint,
and then he would turn up his heels to let the lightning pick it out,
regardless of his rider. Once or twice the peccaries were sighted as
two faint gray streaks, just outlined against the dark green brush,
into which they disappeared at once. Several times it looked as if we
ought to overtake them in a minute or two, but that minute never came.
Our Yaqui guide was valiantly to the front, making leaps over cactuses
that would have shamed a kangaroo, and keeping well ahead of the
horses. Suddenly he stopped and gave up the chase on the near side of
a broad river, the result of the rain. His face was melancholy in the
extreme, and it was known he would not give up the chase without the
best of reasons, as he was to receive a month's wages (five dollars)
if a _jabali_ were killed. He explained in Spanish that the party had
been following the hogs with an absolute certainty of catching them,
so tired had they become, when, to his dismay, the tracks of three
other fresh peccaries were seen coming in at this point. Whenever
fresh _jabalis_ join those worn out enough to come to bay, the latter
change their minds as to fighting, and will run as long as their fresh
companions hold out. We thus would have had another eight to twelve
miles' chase through the slippery mud, which the horses and mules
could not have endured, so exhausted were they already. We had seen
the beasts, nevertheless, and in losing them had learned one of their
distinct peculiarities, which fact was sufficient compensation for our
first, but never to be forgotten, hunt for wild pigs.
[Illustration]
The peccary, as already stated, is a ferocious little beast, never
hesitating, when in numbers, to attack other animals. The coyote leaves
them alone if numerous, and even the mountain lion passes them to look
for other game. Their tusks are deadly weapons, and they click like so
many hammers when the creature is angry. If any ambitious Nimrod wants
a hunt after the most peculiar game extant in the United States and
Mexico he ought to take a peccary chase in Central Sonora.
The country around Guaymas is extremely fertile, and in no part of
the American continent is there a richer country than lies along the
eastern and northern portion of the Gulf of California. Sonora and
Sinaloa are conceded to be the richest States in Mexico, and just as
Mexico has been the most backward country of North America, so these
two States are the least advanced portion of Mexico. This condition
of affairs is due almost wholly to the same cause that has retarded
the growth of Arizona and New Mexico, namely, the raids of hostile
Indian tribes. These two States have not only been a favorite hunting
and scalping ground for the Apaches, but within their own borders
have been superior and warlike races to contend with in the Yaqui and
Mayo Indians. The last war of the Yaquis with the Mexican Government
lasted over twelve years, but since its close a number of years ago
the Indians are settling in the towns and villages, where they are
the most industrious portion of the working population. With the
disappearance of this disturbing element the most important problem
regarding the growth and development of the garden of the Pacific
appears to have been solved. Every grade of climate can be found here,
from the tropical seacoast to the temperate great plateaus, a short
distance inland. The country has a rich, well-watered soil; there are
vast, well-wooded mountain ranges, where all kinds of game are found
in abundance; the rivers and bays are filled with every variety of
fish, and two or more crops of fruits or staple articles can be raised
yearly. Such a country cannot long remain unnoticed and unsettled; for
when railways are constructed through it the attention of outsiders
must be drawn to the land.
[Illustration]