ACROSS THE MEXICO BORDER
“Mexico is a good place to keep away from just at present.” This was
the invariable answer to a few casual inquiries concerning what I
would be likely to meet with in the way of difficulties, a possible
companion for the voyage to the Gulf, and how one could get back when
once there. I received little encouragement from the people of Yuma.
The cautions came not from the timid who see danger in every rumour,
but from the old steamboat captains, the miners, and prospectors
who knew the country and had interests in mineral claims across the
border. These claims they had lost in many cases because they had
failed for the last two years to keep up their assessment work. There
were vague suggestions of being stood up against an adobe wall with a
row of “yaller bellies” in front, or being thrown into damp dungeons
and held for a ransom.
The steamboat men could give me little information about the river.
The old channel had filled with silt, and the river was diverted into
a roundabout course little more than a creek in width, then spread
over whole delta. The widely spread water finally collected into an
ancient course of the Colorado, known as the Hardy or False Colorado.
As nearly as I could learn no one from Yuma had been through this new
channel beyond a certain point called Volcanic Lake. Two or three
parties had come back with stories of having attempted it, but found
themselves in the middle of a cane-brake with insufficient water
to float a boat. With a desire to be of real assistance to me, one
old captain called a Yuma Indian into his office and asked him his
opinion, suggesting that he might go along.
“Mebbe so get lost in the trees, mebbe so get shot by the Cocopah,”
the Indian replied as he shook his head.
The captain laughed at the last and said that the Yuma and Cocopah
Indians were not the best of friends, and accused each other of
all sorts of things which neither had committed. Some Mexicans and
certain outlawed whites who kept close to the border for different
reasons, and the possibilities of bogging in a cane-brake were the
only uncertainties. In so many words he advised me against going.
Still I persevered. I had planned so long on completing my boating
trip to the Gulf, that I disliked to abandon the idea altogether. I
felt sure, with a flood on the Colorado, there would be some channel
that a flat-bottomed boat could go through, when travelling with the
current; but the return trip and the chances of being made a target
for some hidden native who had lived on this unfriendly border and
had as much reason for respecting some citizens of the United States
as our own Indians had in the frontier days, caused me considerable
concern. I knew it was customary everywhere to make much of the
imaginary dangers, as we had found in our other journeys; but it is
not difficult to discriminate between sound advice and the croakings
which are based on lack of real information. I knew this was sound
advice, and as usual I disliked to follow it. At last I got some
encouragement. It came from a retired Wild West showman,--the real
thing, one who knew the West from its early days. He laughed at the
idea of danger and said I was not likely to find any one, even if
I was anxious to do so, until I got to the La Bolsa Ranch near the
Gulf. They would be glad to see me. He thought it was likely to prove
uninteresting unless I intended to hunt wild hogs, but that was
useless without dogs, and I would have trouble getting a gun past the
custom officers. His advice was to talk with the Mexican consul, as
he might know some one who could bring me back by horseback.
In the consul I found a young Spaniard, all affability, bows, and
gestures; and without being conscious of it at first I too began
making motions. He deplored my lack of knowledge of the Spanish
language, laughed at any suggestion of trouble, as all trouble was
in Eastern Sonora, he said, separated from the coast by two hundred
miles of desert, and stated that the non-resident owner of the La
Bolsa cattle ranch happened to be in the building at that moment.
In a twinkling he had me before him and explained the situation.
This gentleman, the owner of a 600,000-acre grant, and the fishing
concession of the Gulf, stated that the ranch drove a team to Yuma
once a week, that they would bring me back; in the interval I must
consider myself the guest of the Rancho La Bolsa. The consul gave me
a passport, and so it was all arranged.
In spite of the consul’s opinion, there were many whispered rumours
of war, of silent automobiles loaded with firearms that stole out of
town under cover of the night and returned in four days, and another
of a river channel that could be followed and was followed, the start
being made, not from Yuma, but from another border town farther west.
A year before there had been an outbreak at this place of certain
restless spirits,--some whites included,--and they went along the
northern line of Mexico, sacking the ranches and terrorizing the
people. The La Bolsa ranch was among those that suffered. The party
contained some discharged vaqueros who were anxious to interview
the ranch foreman, but fortunately for him he was absent. Then they
turned south to Chihuahua and joined the army of Madero. War, to
them, meant license to rob and kill. They were not insurrectos, but
bandits, and this was the class that was most feared.
Meanwhile I had not given up the idea of a possible companion. Before
coming to Yuma I had entertained hopes of getting some one with a
motor boat to take me down and back, but there were no motor boats,
I found. The nearest approach to a power boat was an attempt that
was being made to install the engine from a wrecked steam auto on
a sort of flat-bottomed scow. I heard of this boat three or four
times, and in each case the information was accompanied by a smile
and some vague remarks about a “hybrid.” I hunted up the owner,--the
proprietor of a shooting gallery,--a man who had once had aspirations
as a heavy-weight prize fighter, but had met with discouragement.
So he had turned his activities to teaching the young idea how to
shoot--especially the “Mexican idea” and those other border spirits
who were itching for a scrap.
The proprietor of the shooting gallery drove a thriving trade. Since
he had abandoned his training he had taken on fat, and I found him
to be a genial sort of giant who refused to concern himself with the
serious side of life. Even a lacing he had received in San Francisco
at the hands of a negro stevedore struck him as being humorous. He
did not seem to have much more confidence in his “power boat” than
the others, but said I might talk with the man who was putting it
together, ending with the remark “Phillipps thinks he can make her
run, and he has always talked of going to the Gulf.”
On investigation I found Al Phillipps was anxious to go to the Gulf,
and would go along if I would wait until he got his boat in shape.
This would take two days. Phillipps, as he told me himself, was a
Jayhawker who had left the farm in Kansas and had gone to sea for two
years. He was a cowboy, but had worked a year or two about mining
engines. In Yuma he was a carpenter, but was anxious to leave and
go prospecting along the Gulf. Phillipps and I were sure to have
an interesting time. He spoke Spanish and did not fear any of the
previously mentioned so-called dangers; he had heard of one party
being carried out to sea when the tide rushed out of the river, but
as we would have low tide he thought that, with caution, we could
avoid that.
At last all was ready for the momentous trial. The river bank was
lined with a crowd of men who seemed to have plenty of leisure.
Some long-haired Yuma Indians, and red and green turbaned Papagos,
gathered in a group off a little to one side. A number of darkies
were fishing for bullheads, and boys of three colors besides the
Mexicans and a lone Chinaman clambered over the trees and the boats
along the shore.
[Illustration: WINTER IN THE GRAND CANYON, FROM THE RIM.]
[Illustration: WINTER IN THE GRAND CANYON, FROM THE RIVER.]
It was a moment of suspense for Phillipps. His reputation as an
engineer and a constructor of boats hung in the balance. He also
had some original ideas about a rudder which had been incorporated
in this boat. Now was his chance to test them out, and his hour of
triumph if they worked.
The test was a rigid one. The boat was to be turned upstream against
an eight-mile current with big sand-waves, beginning about sixty feet
from the shore, running in the middle of the river. If the engine
ran, and the stern paddle-wheel turned, his reputation was saved. If
she was powerful enough to go against the current, it was a triumph
and we would start for the Gulf at once.
On board were Phillipps, a volunteer, and myself. Before turning the
boat loose, the engine was tried. It was a success. The paddle-wheel
churned the water at a great rate, sending the boat upstream as far
as the ropes would let her go. We would try a preliminary run in the
quiet water close to the shore, before making the test in the swift
current. The order was given to cast off, and for two men, the owner
and another, to hold to the ropes and follow on the shore. The engine
was started, the paddle-wheel revolved, slowly at first but gathering
speed with each revolution. We began to move gently, then faster, so
that the men on shore had difficulty in keeping even with us, impeded
as they were with bushes and sloping banks. Flushed with success,
the order was given to turn her loose, and we gathered in the ropes.
Now we were drifting away from the shore and making some headway
against the swift current. The crowd on shore was left behind.
But as we left the bank the river increased in speed and the boat
gradually lost. Then she stood still, but began to turn slowly,
broadside to the current. This was something we had not foreseen.
With no headway the rudder was of no avail. There was no sweep-oar;
we had even neglected to put an oar on the boat. With pieces of
boards the stranger and I paddled, trying to hold her straight, but
all the time, in spite of our efforts, she drifted away from the land
and slowly turned. A big sand-wave struck her, she wheeled in her
tracks and raced straight for a pier, down the stream.
About this time our engineer began having trouble with his engine. At
first we feared it would not run, now it seemed it would not stop.
A great shout went up from the shore, and a bet was made that we
would run to the Gulf in less than a day. A darky boy fell off a boat
in the excitement, the Indians did a dance, men pounded each other
and whooped for joy. Then a bolt came loose, and the engine ran away.
Driving-rod and belts were whirled “regardless,” as the passenger
afterwards said, about our heads.
Then the crash came. Our efforts to escape the pier were of no avail.
I made a puny effort to break the impact with a pole, but was sent
sprawling on the deck. Al tumbled headlong on top of the engine,
which he had stopped at last, our passenger rolled over and over,
but we all stayed with the ship. Each grabbing a board, we began to
paddle and steered the craft to the shore.
With the excitement over, the crowd faded away. Only two or three
willing hands remained to help us line the craft back to the landing.
The owner, who had to run around the end of the bridge, came down
puffing and blowing, badly winded, at the end of the first round.
Without a word from any one we brought the boat back to the landing.
Al was the first to speak.
“Well, what are you going to do?” he asked.
“Me? I’m going to take my boat and start for the Gulf in ten minutes.
I’ll take nothing that I cannot carry. If I have to leave the river I
will travel light across the desert to Calexico. I think that I can
get through. If you want to go along, I’ll stick with you until we
get back. What do you think about it?”
It was a long speech and a little bitter perhaps. I felt that way.
The disappointment on top of the three days’ delay when time was
precious could not be forgotten in a moment. And when my speech was
said I was all through.
Al said he would be ready in half an hour. Our beds were left
behind. Al had a four-yard square of canvas for a sail. This would
be sufficient covering at night in the hot desert. We had two
canteens. The provisions, scarcely touched before arriving here,
were sufficient for five days. I was so anxious to get started that
I did not take the time to replenish them in Yuma, intending to do
so at the custom-house on the Arizona side twelve miles below, where
some one had told me there was a store. I counted on camping there.
After a hurriedly eaten luncheon we were ready to start, the boat was
shoved off, and we were embarked for Mexico.
Half an hour later we passed the abandoned Imperial Canal, the
man-made channel which had nearly destroyed the vast agricultural
lands which it had in turn created. Just such a flood as that on
which we were travelling had torn out the insufficiently supported
head-gates. The entire stream, instead of pushing slowly across
the delta, weltering in its own silt to the Gulf, poured into the
bottom of the basin nearly four hundred feet below the top of this
silt-made dam. In a single night it cut an eighty-foot channel in
the unyielding soil, and what had once been the northern end of the
California Gulf was turned into an inland sea, filled with the turbid
waters of the Colorado, instead of the sparkling waters of the ocean.
Nothing but an almost superhuman fight finally rescued the land from
the grip of the water.
A short distance below, just across the Mexican line, on the
California side, was the new canal, dug in a firmer soil and with
strongly built gates anchored in rock back from the river.
Half a mile away from the stream, on a spur railway, was the Mexican
custom-house. I had imagined that it would be beside the river, and
that guards would be seen patrolling the shore. But aside from an
Indian fishing, there was no one to be seen. We walked out to the
custom-house, gave a list of the few things which we had, assured
them that we carried no guns, paid our duty, and departed. We had
imagined that our boat would be inspected, but no one came near.
The border line makes a jog here at the river and the Arizona-Mexico
line was still a few miles down the stream. We had passed the mouth
of the old silt-dammed Colorado channel, which flowed a little west
of south; and we turned instead to the west into the spreading delta
or moraine. About this time I remarked that I had seen no store at
the custom-house and that I must not neglect to get provisions at the
next one or we would be rather short.
“We passed our last custom-house back there.” Al replied, “That’s
likely the last place we will see until we get to the ranch by the
Gulf.”
No custom-house! No store! This was a surprise. What was a border
for if not to have custom-houses and inspectors? With all the talk
of smuggling I had not thought of anything else. And I could tell by
Al’s tone that his estimation of my foresight had dropped several
degrees. This was only natural, for his disappointment and the jibes
still rankled.
At last we were wholly in Mexican territory. With the States behind,
all of our swiftly running water had departed, and we now travelled
on a stream that was nearly stagnant. All the cottonwood logs which
had finally been carried down the stream after having been deposited
on a hundred shores, found here their final resting place. About each
cluster of logs an island was forming, covered with a rank grass and
tules.
Ramified channels wound here and there. Two or three times we found
ourselves in a shallow channel, and with some difficulty retraced our
way. All channels looked alike, but only one was deep.
Then the willow trees which were far distant on either shore began to
close in and we travelled in a channel not more than a hundred feet
wide, growing smaller with every mile. This new channel is sometimes
termed the Bee River. It parallels the northern Mexico line; it
also parallels a twenty-five mile levee which the United States
government has constructed along the northern edge of this fifty-mile
wide dam shoved across the California Gulf by the stream, building
higher every year. Except for the river channel the dam may be said
to reach unbroken from the Arizona-Sonora Mesa to the Cocopah
Mountains. The levee runs from a point of rocks near the river to
Lone Mountain, a solitary peak some distance east of the main range.
This levee, built since the trouble with the canal, is all that
prevents the water from breaking into the basin in a dozen places.
We saw signs of two or three camp-fires close to the stream, and
with the memory of the stories haunting us a little we built only a
small fire when we cooked our evening meal, then extinguished it,
and camped on a dry point of land a mile or two below. I think we
were both a little nervous that night; I confess that I was, and if
an unwashed black-bearded individual had poked his head out from the
willows and said, “Woof!” or whatever it is that they say when they
want to start up a jack-rabbit, we would both have stampeded clear
across the border. In fact I felt a little as I did when I played
truant from school and wondered what would happen when I was found
out.
Daybreak found us ready to resume our journey, and with a rising sun
any nervousness vanished. What could any one want with two men who
had nothing but a flat-bottomed boat?
All the morning we travelled west, the trees ever drawing closer
as our water departed on the south, running through the willows,
arrow-weed, and cat-tails. Then the channel opened into Volcanic
Lake, a circular body of water, which is not a lake but simply a
gathering together of the streams we had been losing, and here the
water stands, depositing its mud. All the way across had no depth but
a bottomless mud, so soft it would engulf a person if he tried to
wade across.
On the west there was no growth. The shore was nothing but an
ash-like powder, not a sand, but a rich soil blown here and there,
building in dunes against every obstruction, ever moving before
the wind. Here were boiling, sputtering mud pots and steam vents
building up and exhausting through mud pipe-stems, rising a foot
or two above the springs. Here was a shelter or two of sun-warped
boards constructed by those who come here crippled with rheumatism
and are supposed to depart, cured. Here we saw signs of a wagon track
driven toward Calexico, the border town directly north of the lake.
The heat was scorching, the sun, reflected from the sand and water,
was blistering, and we could well imagine what a walk across that
ash-like soil would mean. Mirages in the distance beckoned, trees and
lakes were seen over toward the mountains where we had seen nothing
but desert before; heat waves rose and fell. Our mouths began to puff
from the reflected sun, our faces burned and peeled, black and red in
spots. There was no indication of the slightest breeze until about
three o’clock, when the wind moved gently across the lake.
We had skirted the northern part of the circle, passing a few small
streams and then found one of the three large channels which empty
the lake. As it happened we took the one on the outside, and the
longest. The growth grew thicker than ever, the stream choked down to
fifty feet. Now it began to loop backward and forward and back again,
as though trying to make the longest and crookedest channel possible
in the smallest space. The water in the channel was stagnant, swift
streamlets rushed in from the tules on the north, and rushed out
again on the south. It was not always a simple matter to ascertain
which was the main channel. Others just as large were diverted from
the stream. Twice we attempted to cut across, but the water became
shallow, the tules stalled our boats, and we were glad to return,
sounding with a pole when in doubt.
Then we began to realize that we were not entirely alone in this
wilderness of water. We saw evidence of another’s passage, in broken
cat-tails and blazed trees. In many places he had pushed into
the thickets. We concluded it must be a trapper. At last, to our
surprise, we saw a telephone equipment, sheltered in a box nailed on
a water-surrounded tree. The line ran directly across the stream.
Here also we could see where a boat had forced a way through, and
the water plants had been cut with a sharp instrument. What could it
be? We were certain no line ran to the only ranch at the Gulf. We
had information of another ranch directly on the border line, but
did not think it came below the levee, and as far as we had learned,
there were no homes but the wickiups of the Cocopah in the jungles.
It was like one of those thrilling stories of Old Sleuth and Dead
Shot Dick which we read, concealed in our schoolbooks, when we were
supposed to be studying the physical geography of Mexico. But the
telephone was no fiction, and had recently been repaired, but for
what purpose it was there we could not imagine. After leaving the
lake there was no dry land. At night our boat, filled with green
tules for a bed, was tied to a willow tree, with its roots submerged
in ten feet of water. Never were there such swarms of mosquitos.
In the morning our faces were corrugated with lumps, not a single
exposed spot remaining unbitten.
The loops continued with the next day’s travel, but we were
gradually working to the southwest, then they began to straighten
out somewhat, as the diverted streams returned. We thought early in
the morning that we would pass about ten miles to the east of the
coast range, but it was not to be. Directly to the base of the dark,
heat-vibrating rocks we pulled, and landed on the first shore that we
had seen for twenty-four hours.
[Illustration: A VAQUERO IN THE MAKING.]
[Illustration: CLIFF SWALLOWS’ NESTS. FOUND FROM WYOMING TO MEXICO.]
Here was a recently used trail, and tracks where horses came down to
the water. Here too was the track of a barefooted Cocopah, a tribe
noted for its men of gigantic build, and with great feet out of all
proportion to their size. If that footprint was to be fossilized,
future generations would marvel at the evidence of some gigantic
prehistoric animal, an alligator with a human-shaped foot. These
Indians have lived in these mud bottoms so long, crossing the streams
on rafts made of bundles of tules, and only going to the higher land
when their homes are inundated by the floods, that they have become a
near approach to a web-footed human being.
Our stream merely touched the mountain, then turned directly to the
southeast in a gradually increasing stream. Now we began to see the
breeding places of the water-birds of which we had heard. There was
a confusion of bird calls, sand-hill cranes were everywhere; in some
cases with five stick-built nests in a single water-killed tree. A
blue heron flopped around as though it had broken a wing, to decoy us
from its nest. The snowy white pelican waddled along the banks and
mingled with the cormorants. There were great numbers of gulls, and
occasional snipe. We were too late to see the ducks which come here,
literally by the million, during the winter months. There were hawks’
nests in the same groups of trees as the cranes, with the young hawks
stretching their necks for the food which was to be had in such
abundance. And on another tree sat the parent hawks, complacently
looking over the nests of the other birds, like a coyote waiting for
a horse to die. At Cocopah Mountain a golden eagle soared, coming
down close to the ground as we rested under the mesquite. Then as we
travelled clear streams of water began to pour in from the north and
east, those same streams we had lost above, but cleared entirely of
their silt. Now the willows grew scarce, and instead of mud banks a
dry, firm earth was built up from the river’s edge, and the stream
increased in size. Soon it was six or seven hundred feet wide and
running with a fair current. This was the Hardy River. We noticed
signs of falling water on the banks as though the stream had dropped
an inch or two. In a half-hour the mark indicated a fall of eight
inches or more; then we realized we were going out with the tide. A
taste of water proved it. The river water was well mixed with a weak
saline solution. We filled our canteens at once.
We saw a small building and a flagpole on the south shore, but on
nearing the place found it was deserted. A few miles below were
two other channels equally as large as that on which we travelled,
evidently fed by streams similar to our own. There were numerous
scattered trees, some of them cottonwood, and we saw some grazing
cattle. We began to look for the ranch house, which some one had said
was at the point where the Colorado and the Hardy joined, and which
others told us was at the Gulf.