Having descended into the barranca, which now felt almost uncomfortably warm, after the piercing winds of the highlands, I first visited the plateaus on the southern side, where the Indians have still kept themselves tolerably free from the white man’s evil influence and are very jealous of their land. One night, while camping in a deep arroyo with very steep sides frowning down on us, one of the Indian carriers woke us with the startling news: “Get up! A stone is falling and will strike us!” I heard a noise, and instantly a stone, half the size of a child’s head, hit the informant himself, as he sleepily rose. He lost his breath, but soon recovered, and no further damage was done.
I secured the necessary carriers and went down again to the river, which I now followed westward from Nogal for about twenty-five miles. The elevation at Nogal is 4,450 feet, about 800 feet higher than the place at which we left the river again. At the outset we came upon two very hot springs, the water of which had a yellow sediment. The gorge was narrow throughout. Sometimes its two sides rise almost perpendicularly, leaving but a narrow passage for the river. We then had either to wade in the water or to ascend some thousand feet, in order to continue our way. But generally there was a bank on one side or the other, and now and then the valley widened, yielding sufficient space for some bushes, or even a tree to grow, though it soon narrowed again. In some such spots we found a shrub called baynoro, with long, flexible branches and light-green leaves. Its small, yellow berries were as sweet as honey, but they did not agree with the Mexicans, who had stomach-aches and lost their appetites after eating them. The Indians made the same complaints, but I felt no ill effects from them.
Along the river we saw the tracks of many raccoons and otters, and there were also ducks and blue herons.
The colour of the water in the deep places was greyish green, and as the river rises in the high sierra, it felt icy cold to wade through. One day we had to cross it eight times. On one such occasion, while wading waist-deep, the Indian who carried the photographic outfit in a bag on his back, forgot for a moment, on account of the stinging cold, how far his burden hung down, and let it dip into the water. The prospect of being prevented, perhaps for a long time to come, from photographing, was very annoying. Six plate-holders were so wet that I could not even draw the shutters out, but luckily I had more elsewhere.
We came upon several ancient cave-dwellings, all of which were rather small, and attributed by the Tarahumares to the Tubar Indians. One of them was situated about 250 feet above the bottom of the barranca. A two-storied, rather irregularly shaped building occupied the entire width of the cave, without reaching to the roof. The floor of the house was scarcely two yards broad, but the building widened out very much, following the shape of the cave. The materials used in the construction were stone and mud or, rather, reddish grit; and smaller stones had been put between larger ones in an irregular way. The walls were only five or six inches thick and were plastered with mud. An upright pole supported the ceiling, which was rather pretty, consisting of reeds resting on the rafters, and covered on top with mud. The ceiling of the second story had been made in the same way, but had fallen in. A piece of thick board half covered the entrance. In the first story I found an additional chamber, and in it a skeleton, of which I secured the skull and some typical bones.
Barranca de San Carlos, in its Upper Part.
Not far from this, and situated in very rough country, was another cave, that contained ten one-storied chambers of the same material and construction. The cave was fifty feet long and at the mouth seven feet high. The apertures of the chambers were fairly squared, and not of the shape of the conventional ear of corn. One door was a foot and a half broad, and two feet and a half high. I crawled through the chambers, which were miserably small. The floor was plastered, and in some rooms I noticed circular holes sunk into the ground in the way that I had already observed in Zapuri. There were also small square holes, the sides being six inches long in the front wall.
One of my Companions in Barranca de San Carlos.