THROUGH THE SIERRA MADRES--ON MULE-BACK WESTWARD FROM CARICHIC.
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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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. 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.
[Illustration: A TARAHUMARI MOUNTAIN HOME.]
We were now well into the Sierra Madre range, and although the scenery
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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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, 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 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 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 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.
[Illustration: OLD TARAHUMARI INDIAN.]