We spent a couple of days at the Double Adobes ranch, inspected the new spring that Tommy had discovered, hunted a little in the hills round the base of old Animas Peak, rode over a good deal of the Pigpen and Double Adobes range, and finally returned to the Gray Place.
FOOTNOTES:
[32] To find a really filthy ranch house, to see really filthy cooking and eating services, to have real garbage placed before you to eat, you must seek amongst establishments presided over by women.
[33] Chat and joke.
[34] The Apache leader.
CHAPTER XI. ANIMAS VALLEY.—V.
At the Gray Place we found Lieut. Huse, who had come up from the supply camp at Lang's; and as he was returning on the following day, and we had decided sooner or later to go there also, we drove down together. Eighteen miles in the teeth of a wind that would have driven an old Dutch lightship, with only a jury-mast and a small flag set, at the rate of fifteen knots an hour. How it came roaring up the funnel of that valley out of the very heart of the great, mysterious Sierra Madre—steadily, obstinately, unyieldingly!
About eight miles before the Lang ranch was reached, and at the broadest point in the valley, we crossed a very curious dyke, or levee. Leaving the foot-hills, it stretched across to the valley plain, in a direct line, for about seven or eight miles, turned then at right angles, and ran straight down the valley for about ten miles, and with another bend at right angles rejoined the foot-hills. The space thus enclosed was perfectly flat, and lay slightly higher than the outside plain. At its base the levee was about 120 ft. broad, diminishing at the top to thirty or forty, which was raised about twenty-five above the surrounding levels. These dimensions were maintained throughout with perfect regularity, save at one point (in the south-western corner), where a small gap destroyed the completeness of the lines. The labour expended in its construction must have been enormous; and since it is hardly likely to have been built for defence (natural positions of so much greater strength abounding in the neighbourhood), and there is no reason to suppose that it was meant to exclude water, what was the object of it? Possibly it was intended to hold water. Springs still exist within its boundaries, although, at the present date, they are comparatively insignificant. About eight miles off, in the Cojon Bonita, there are some warm springs at which a permanent stream takes its rise, however, and centres of aqueous, like centres of volcanic activity, are liable, I presume, to change. Many Aztec works of the kind mentioned occur in Mexico, although this, I believe, is of unusual magnitude. So far as I know, no satisfactory hypothesis has yet been started to account for the object of these enclosures.