West Burton of South Austin and I were on a hunting trip down below San
Antonio. The talk had been, as usual, on old days and lost mines and
trails. I brought up the subject of Lost Canyon. “Yes,” said he, “I
have heard of the place many times, but I never believed that it
existed till I met an old prospector in Mexico who had once been in the
place.
“This prospector was a broke man when I saw him, broke in more ways
than one, but he could tell his story straight. He was prospecting down
the Rio Grande in a skiff or canoe, putting in at various canyons and
gorges to examine for minerals. At a certain rapids his boat got
snagged so that he could not fix it, and there was nothing for him to
do but to strike out afoot. He made up a small pack of a blanket and
some provisions, and with a rifle struck north up a steep ravine,
intending somehow to reach the Southern Pacific Railroad.
“The ravine that he took up was so narrow and rough that in some places
he could hardly travel, but after a while it began to open out, and
imagine his surprise when it spread into a kind of basin that stretched
out farther than he could see. The grass in it was as green as a wheat
field, though there was a drouth on, as usual, and there were springs
of pure, sweet water; but the thing that made him rub his eyes was a
herd of buffaloes, perhaps a hundred or more. The prospector killed one
for meat, and camped for two or three days by a spring, while he got a
good fill of the meat and jerked as much as he could take with him.
Then he set out towards the north again.
“He found when he tried to get out that the basin was rimmed in by a
high bluff up which there was apparently no trail. But after he had
trailed himself around a good deal, he discovered a kind of gorge that
he climbed out through. No buffalo could ever get out or in through it,
he said. When he got up on top of the rim he was in the Chisos
Mountains, unfenced, even unclaimed, some of them, I guess. He was in a
country that no outpost of a range rider ever comes into, that no
trapper has ever entered. There’s no reason why a human being should go
into that country. The wonder to me is that this prospector tried to
make his way over it. His way was crookeder than a devil’s walking
cane—if you have ever seen one of them. They are about the only things
that grow in that country, you know. But he kept on generally north. He
nearly perished for water, and only the moisture of the jerked buffalo
that he had had sense enough not to salt kept him from parching to
death. He threw away all of his pack but that jerkie.
“Finally, somehow, by the help of the Lord, he reached the railroad
somewhere between Sanderson and Marathon, and as luck would have it, he
stumbled right into the camp of a construction gang. The cook of the
outfit was an old Mexican who had worked for his father and knew him.
This cook gave the prospector only a little beef broth and would not
let him have that except in sips. And so in a few days he got over his
terrible experience.
“From the camp he went on to Sanderson and actually raised an
expedition to go back and find the canyon of buffalo. But he never
could find the way back across to it. He says that he knows now that
the only way ever to reach it is to enter it from the Rio Grande, up
that narrow gorge.”