Near the town is a sort of pleasure garden, or ranch, as it is sometimes called. It is owned by an industrious German, who sank a number of wells on the place, and obtained warm, cold, and mineral waters, and established baths, which are very popular with the people and make the place quite a resort. There are groves of all kinds of tropical fruits and plants, with flowers in the greatest profusion; the brilliant, gorgeous flowers of the tropics growing beside the more modest ones of the temperate zone, and making the arid, rocky region beautiful with blossoms and shade. During the rainy season this country is the home of the tarantula, the centipede, and the scorpion, for they flourish equally as well as the flowers.
In one of the rooms of the American Consulate, facing the principal plaza, is lodged a piece of a shell, thrown there, singularly enough, by an American man-of-war when Guaymas was taken in 1847, during the Mexican War. At that time the Portsmouth and the Congress entered the harbor, shelled the town, and took it. The piece of shell referred to lodged in the huge wooden rafters of the building, and as these are never covered in the simple architecture of that country its rusty, round side is plainly visible from beneath. From the positions assigned to the vessels it is said to have been the Congress, she of Monitor-Merrimac fame afterward; and as the American flag still floats from the staff directly over the shell it is quite an interesting and historic piece of iron. Very few Americans, however, associate the quiet little town of Guaymas with any event of the war waged so long ago that its memories are almost lost in the later and greater war of civil strife.
In the good old times Guaymas used to have revolutions of its own. Whenever a governor of the place was financially embarrassed, or imagined he would soon be replaced by some fresh favorite from the City of Mexico, he would issue a proclamation and send around to merchant after merchant to take up a collection. If they had the temerity to object, not wishing to part with their worldly goods in that fashion, one of their number was selected as an example, taken out and shot, which had the desired effect of causing the others to come to time. We had the pleasure of meeting one of the old-time governors who had ruled in this fashion. He now holds an important position, is a man of great wealth, and a distinguished citizen—a tall, fine-looking man—but I could not help thinking he looked the born pirate, and would enjoy playing the despot again if he had the opportunity.
The great mass of the working class of this western part of Mexico are the Yaqui and Mayo Indians, portions of these tribes being civilized, and others adhering to their wild and nomadic life in the mountains. They are one of the most interesting features of the country. For years savage members of the Yaqui tribe have waged bloody and successful wars against the Mexican Government, and have been the principal cause of the slow development of the Gulf coast; but since the death of their famous leader Cajeme they have been peaceable and quiet. As a race they are remarkably stalwart, handsome, and aggressive, and are said to be able to endure any extremes of heat or cold. They are enlisted in the service of the government whenever it is possible, and make the best soldiers obtainable for this particular country.
While in Guaymas I heard from reliable sources that the jabali, peccary, or Mexican wild hog, was quite plentiful along the line of the Sonora Railway, and determined to get up a small party and attack these pugnacious pigs in their own haunts. The jabali (pronounced hah-va-lee in the Mexican version of the Spanish language) is the wild hog of Northern Mexico, and while one of them is in no wise equal to the wild boar of other countries, still, as they go in droves, and are equal in courage, they more than make up in numbers all they lose by being considered individually. Up to this time my game list had included polar bears, chipmunks, moose, jack rabbits, grizzlies, snipe, elk, buffalo, snow birds, reindeer, vultures, panther, and others, but as yet the scalp of no peccary dangled from my belt. So one fine morning we pulled out for Torres station, about twenty or twenty-five miles up the railway, where peccaries could be expected, and where horses (better speaking, the bucking broncho of the Southwest) could be procured, together with guides, ropers-in, etc.
The fertile soil and warm sunshine of Sonora quickens the imagination in a way unknown in the northern part of the United States, with its colder clime and cloudy skies. The day before starting I had done a good deal of telegraphing up the Sonora railway to learn just where these peccaries might be the most numerous, and the replies were enthusiastic as well as comical. Carbo sent back word that the section men on the railway had to "shoo" the jabalis off the track so as to repair it; another station reported that wild hogs were seen every day except Sundays; another station said there was a Yaqui Indian guide there who went out with a lasso and a long, sharpened stick, and brought in a peccary every morning before breakfast; while Torres thought I could have jabali about three miles from there. This was the most modest report and the nearest station, so I decided on Torres.
The country along the southern portion of the Sonora railway would be interesting in the extreme to one unfamiliar with tropical or sub-tropical countries. Its vegetation was most curious, and the surrounding country picturesque. Fine scenery can, indeed, be viewed in a thousand places in our own country, but it is not characterized with such a wonderful plant growth as we saw that morning on our way to the slaughter grounds of the peccaries. Here was the universal mesquite, looking like a dwarfed apple tree, and that affords the brightest fire of any wood ever burned. The tender of our engine was filled with it, and, as far as fuel was concerned, we could have made sixty miles an hour, had we wished to do so. The wood of the mesquite is of a beautiful bright cherry red; many a time I have wondered if this plentiful, tough, and twisted timber of the far Southwest could not be utilized in some way as a fancy wood; certainly a more beautiful color was never seen. Occasionally I thought I saw my old friend the sagebrush; then there was the ironwood (palo de hierro), that looks like a very fine variety of the mesquite. Its name is derived from its hardness, and is well deserved. It requires an ax to fell each tree, and as the quality of different trees is always the same, and that of different axes is not, even this ratio of one ax to one tree has to be changed occasionally, and always in favor of the tree. There was a story going the rounds that a tramp, who had wandered into that country (tramps sometimes get lost and find themselves in Sonora just once), with the usual appetite of his class applied for something to eat. In reply he was told, if he would get out a certain number of rails for a fence, the proprietor would give him a week's board. It was, as he thought, about a day's work that had been assigned him, and bright and early next morning he sallied out with his ax on his shoulder. Unfortunately the most tempting tree he met was an ironwood. Very late in the evening he returned with the ax helve on his arm. "How many rails did you split to-day?" was asked. "I did not split any, but I hewed out one," was the reply; and then he resigned his position.
There is also the palo verde, named for its color, with its bright, vivid green leaf, twig, and bark, and its pretty yellow blossoms, making a beautiful contrast with the more somber green of other trees. Occasionally great rows of cottonwoods (the alamo of the Mexicans) show the line of water courses, while a number of shrubs covered with blossoms are seen, apparently half tree, half cactus, so thick are their brambles and thorns. But as to cactus! There are five hundred species in America, of which Mexico has a large plurality, and the majority of these can be found along this end of the Sonora railway. There is the giant pitahaya, sometimes with a dozen arms, each as big as an ordinary tree, and from thirty to forty feet in height. Each arm has a score of pulpy ribs along its sides, and each rib has a button of thorns every inch along its length, each button having twenty or twenty-four great thorns sticking from it. I was told that when a hunter is sorely pressed by peccaries, if he will climb a pitahaya about ten feet, the thorns are so thick and terrible in their effect that the peccaries will not dare to follow him, hardy and venturesome as they are. Then there is the choya or cholla cactus, about as high as one's waist. You can go around a pitahaya as you would a tree, but when you find a field of chopalla (field of choyas) you might as well try to go around the atmosphere to get to a given point. The cholla will lean over until it breaks its back trying to get in your way, so that it can dart a dozen or two spines into your flesh. They are the worst of all; I could use almost as much of my readers' time in describing different cactuses as I used of my own in picking them out of my flesh after the peccary hunt was over, but I forbear.
