There is a widely dispersed variety of pitch pine in these mountains, which may be said to be the candles or the lanterns of the natives of the country. The night scenes in the pitch-pine States of the South have long formed themes in prose and poetry, but those States are in the flat-land coasts of our country, with no scenery to give any of the strange, weird effects of a broken land. At one camp I made upon a high potrero, I saw such a scene. It was in a little flat place in the mountain, where the grass was good for the mules, but where the water was far down the precipitous ravine or box cañon that opened out by a gorge to a great barranca as deep and wide as the Grand Cañon of the Colorado. A half-dozen men at a time, all with pitch-pine torches, descended after water, or to drive the mules to and from water. As they cut long slivers of pine, eight to ten feet in length, that blaze for two-thirds to three-fourths their length, the strange effect on the wild scenery, stretching for miles, can be more easily conceived than described. To have put it faithfully on canvas would have made the reputation of any artist, and the equal of which I have never seen. Vereschagin's "My Camp in the Himalayas" seemed almost tame by comparison. The great wide sombreros, glittering with silver—for even the common peons of Mexico have more costly hats than the "Four Hundred" of New York—the bright red foliage of the manzanillas and the madroño trees, rendered doubly lurid by the reflection of the torches, the sharp rocks of the cañon in battlemented and castellated confusion, stretching off to the mighty barranca five thousand to six thousand feet deep, really made up a picture that not one painter in a thousand could have done justice to, and not one could imitate.
On our third day out we crossed a most picturesque stream called the Panascos River. Near the crossing were a number of huge irregular bowlders lying at the foot of a sculptured cliff. Under those that formed cave-like recesses were a number of Tarahumari cave dwellers, looking absolutely comical in their wide-brim straw hats of coarse grass and their primitive breechclouts. Their skins were so dark-colored that had it not been for this white clothing at the two termini it would have been hard to make them out in the dark, deep caverns into which most of them fled upon our approach.
CAVE-DWELLING TARAHUMARIS.
A recently occupied cave of these strange earth-burrowing savages could nearly always be told by the stains of ascending smoke from the highest point of entrance to the cave. If the cave has been abandoned for any length of time the rain soon wipes out this sure sign of habitation. We passed a large number of caves with funnel-shaped smoke stains, leading up from the outside, but the silence of death surrounded them, as if human life had never been within a mile of the place; but I have not the remotest doubt that there were a dozen people inside of each, peeping at us from around the dark corners, having heard our approach and fled in time to keep well out of our sight. Nothing is noisier than a Mexican mule packer, and the mountains are always resounding with his pious shouting to his lazy, plodding animals as he urges them on; so I considered it very lucky indeed that we saw as many of the living cave and cliff dwellers as we actually did, so excessively shy are these poor, timid creatures.
HOME OF CAVE DWELLERS.
One of our Mexican packers tried to buy a sheep of one of the civilized Tarahumaris a little farther on, but he would not part with one for any money, although apparently having plenty to spare. Many of the pueblos of the civilized Tarahumaris are really isolated communities, raising all they need for food from the soil, or wool for clothing, or both from animals of the chase, and consequently seldom buying or selling.